News

Let’s get this out the way: Nobody titles their film “Eel” if they don’t want critics to reach for the adjective “slippery,” and Chu Chun-Teng’s woozily gorgeous first feature invites it from the off. Its story, slender but charged, is in a constant state of retreat, repeatedly darting into psychological and existential alleys just out of view. Its images, too, are often as elusive as they are beautiful, symbolically layered but accommodating of uncertain, Rorschach-style intuition. The chase is the thrill in “Eel,” an open-ended love story in which an atmosphere of suspended summertime yearning is sometimes cut through with gestures of brazen, unambiguous, horny human need — like a head-clearing pang, or pain, amid lapping waves of more inchoate feeling.

Arguably the most esoteric selection in the inaugural, debut-focused Perspectives competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, “Eel” also announces one of its most emphatically confident...

The most significant change introduced by new Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle is the cancellation of the Encounters sidebar which hosted many arthouse gems supposedly too experimental for the main competition. In its stead, Perspectives––a competitive section dedicated to first films––was created. Its inaugural edition includes Eel, the feature debut of Taiwanese visual artist Chu Chun-teng. Gliding between genres and styles, the film is as slippery as its namesake and may not satisfy those who prefer to understand what they see onscreen. Regardless of how one rates its success as a work of narrative storytelling, Eel certainly announces the arrival of an exciting new voice.

The film’s strangeness and beauty are apparent from the get-go. In the opening sequence, a woman dressed in fiery red walks wordlessly into a river, her gradual disappearance unnoticed by the city on the opposite shore. Then it’s suddenly night and a...

China sales agent Parallax Films has launched sales on three titles selected for Berlin, including hand-drawn animation A Story About Fire, Taiwanese drama Eel and documentary Underground.

Chinese director Li Wenyu’s debut feature A Story About Fire is a 2D animation hand-drawn in traditional Chinese ink painting style and will play in Berlin’s Generation Kplus section. The protagonist is a monkey who embarks on a journey with his loyal dog to steal fire for mankind and gets transformed into a man on his return.

It is backed by the legendary Shanghai Animation Film Studio, the birthplace of some...

Winner of a Golden Bell Award for Best Television film in 2022, “Do Not Go Gentle in Taipei” is an LGBT films in its base, which moves, however, in a number of different genre paths.

on CathayPlay

The story begins in a club filled with strobing lights, loud music, and people dancing. Xiao Ann and Mimi, who seem to be a couple are talking about guys flirting with them. Mimi seems to want to also include a guy in their company, something that Xiao Ann reluctantly agrees to. They pick a guy, A-kai, who is just sitting and watching and the three soon start hanging out in nighttime Taipei, even if the ‘newcomer's' profession sounds a bit shady. It seems that Mimi never had sex with a guy, and that is why they were searching for someone. The three eventually end up in a hotel room, but things...

Wave Makers is a series about those people behind the candidates who create the campaign, about the real brains behind the political world. This time, from Taiwan.

Wave Makers is a Taiwanese series by Lin Jun Yang starring Ying-Hsuan Hsieh, Huang Chien-Wei and Gingle Wang.

It is not a great series on a technical level, but it has such an interesting premise that it is engaging, mostly because of its theme than for its development. A series about current affairs, almost global despite its local setting.

The appeal: to take us into the world of politics, always so ruthless. Perhaps not always? This is the weakness of the series, that of not being incisive or brutal enough in a world that, we all know, is vicious and cruel. It is a series that tends (quite a lot and too much at times) towards easy sentimentality and to portrait society in...

Inspired by real life events on newspaper reports on random killings, featuring an ensemble cast of Joseph Huang, Morning Mo, Huang Pei-jia, Devin Pan, Lai Hoa-zhe and Wang Yu-xuan, and winning numerous awards from Taipei Film Festival and Golden Horse, “Goddamned Asura” also became the official Taiwanese submission to the 2022 Oscars, in one of the most hyped local productions of the recent years.

“Goddamned Asura” is screening at London East Asia Film Festival (Leaff)

Starting with the phone recording of a young man shooting random people in an open-air market, the film proceeds on introducing the protagonists and the ties and issues that bind them. The shooter is soon revealed to be teenager Jan Wen, who, before the shooting, spends his time playing Mmorpg “King’s World” and creating a webcomic with his best friend Xing. At the same time, the pressure he feels is quite intense, since his father,...

Inspired by real life events on newspaper reports on random killings, featuring an ensemble cast of Joseph Huang, Morning Mo, Huang Pei-jia, Devin Pan, Lai Hoa-zhe and Wang Yu-xuan, and winning numerous awards from Taipei Film Festival and Golden Horse, “Goddamned Asura” also became the official Taiwanese submission to the 2022 Oscars, in one of the most hyped local productions of the recent years.

Starting with the phone recording of a young man shooting random people in an open-air market, the film proceeds on introducing the protagonists and the ties and issues that bind them. The shooter is soon revealed to be teenager Jan Wen, who, before the shooting, spends his time playing Mmorpg “King’s World” and creating a webcomic with his best friend Xing. At the same time, the pressure he feels is quite intense, since his father, whose company is developing a big data app, is sending him to the US to study,...

Taiwan has selected Lou Yi-An’s Goddamned Asura as the nation’s pick for the 2023 International Feature Film Academy Award.

The supernatural horror was released six months ago and, having picked up a Golden Horse and three Taipei Film Awards, could be in with a shot.

White Lies creator Yi-An’s third film is described as a “multi-layered psychological drama” that delves into a random shooting by an ordinary teenager through six characters, a popular video game and an alternate reality.

The pic was inspired by real life events from newspaper reports on random killings and stars Joseph Huang, Morning Mo, Peijia Huang, Devin Pan, Hoa-zhe Lai and Wong Yu-xuan, the latter of whom won the Best Supporting Actress award at both the Golden Horse and Taipei. Yi-An is director and writer along with Singing Chen. The film was produced by Content Digital Film Co., Ltd. and Seashore Image Production...

The new horror-suspense film series “Bloody Smart” is adapted from the works of Japanese horror manga master Junji Ito, and is produced by Miracle Production House, with the production of Taiwan Mobile, UDNdnFunLife, Ctbc Venture Capital, Lots Home Entertainment, Jazzy Pictures Malaysia, Angelic-Founder, Bingo-Fund, The opening ceremony was held recently and director Chun-Yi Hsieh and producer Guo-Lun Hsu led the cast of Gigi Leung, Buffy Chen, Jie-En Yu, Rin Zheng, Liu Hsiu-Fu, Devin Pan, and Edison Song in costume. Director Chun-Yi Hsieh said emotionally, “With the efforts of everyone, we were able to create another unique life for Mr. Junji Ito’s work in the film.”

“Bloody Smart” was officially announced as the first Chinese-language film adapted from the works of Junji Ito, and is also a multinational film in cooperation with Taiwan and Japan, so on the eve of the opening, Junji Ito recorded a special video to send...

HBO Asia has expanded its burgeoning production slate with six-episode half-hour series “Invisible Stories.” The first two episodes of the show, “Lian” and “Chuan,” play at the Singapore International Film Festival on Nov. 28.

The series is by writer and director Ler Jiyuan, who previously directed part of HBO Asia Original series “Grisse.” “Like 80% of Singaporeans, I live in a Housing Development Board flat, in a regular Hdb public housing estate,” Ler told Variety. “ ‘Invisible Stories’ is pretty much the world that I came from. I grew up in a three-room flat in Ang Mo Kio (residential town), back in the 1990s. My father was a taxi driver, my mother a factory worker who eventually lost her job during a financial crisis. The life I live, the people I see, were all inspirations for ‘Invisible Stories.’ For example, just two doors down from me was a spiritual medium who turned his flat into a temple.