Swallow 喰之女 Director: Mai Nakanishi (2021)

Swallow   

喰之女

Release Date: 2022

Duration: 23 mins.

Director: Mai Nakanishi

Writer: Mai Nakanishi (Script),

Starring: Han Ning (Mimi), Liu Dai-Ying (Xue-Lan), Vera Chan (Annie), Arrow Chih-Hsuan Peng (Waiter),

 IMDB

One woman’s greedy pursuit of movie stardom leads to a sticky end in Swallow, a 22-minute short from Mai Nakanishi. Winner of a Special Mention at the Generation XYZ competition at Tampere Film Festival 2022, Nakanishi’s film offers a grisly and gorgeous story that gives audiences a bite of body horror, a taste of surreal imagery, and some ideas to digest in a satirical take of our beauty-obsessed culture. For such a short film, there is a lot on offer to delight the senses and intellect.

My Sister 姊姊 Director: Pan Ke-yin (2021) Taiwan [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2022]

My Sister   

姊姊 「Zizi」

Release Date: 2022

Duration: 25 mins.

Director: Pan Ke-yin

Writer: Pan Ke-yin (Screenplay),

Starring: Huang Pei-chi, Chu Yi-ming, Kao Yi-ling, Lan Wei-hua, Chang Kai-jhe,

The title My Sister may make audiences think this film is told from the perspective of the main character’s sibling – a little terror who breaks the peaceful sleep of the lead by playing a tooting tune on a recorder in the opening seconds of the film – but it is really the closely observed portrait of a teenage girl as we get details her younger brother could never know and we are let into her interior world as she begins to doubt her place in the pecking order of the family.

Your Name Engraved Herein 刻在你心底的名字 Director: Liu Kuang-hui (2020) Taiwan Osaka Asian Film Festival 2020

Your Name Engraved Herein   

刻在你心底的名字 

Release Date: June 26th, 2020

Duration: 118 mins.

Director: Liu Kuang-hui

Writer: Chu Yu-ning (Script), Keralino Sandrovich (Original Novel)

Starring: Tseng Chin-hua, Chen Hao-sen, Wang Shih-sian, Leon Dai, Fabio Grangeon, Edward Chen, Mimi Shao,

OAFF IMDB

The first LGBTQ+ film since the legalisation of gay marriage in Taiwan, Your Name Engraved Herein makes itself emblematic of the gay experience by tacking its story of characters accepting their homosexuality and coming out to the easing of cultural conservatism in the 1980s and the embrace of a new openness in Taiwanese society experienced now.

Heavy Craving 大餓 Dir: Hsieh Pei-ju (2019, Taiwan) [Osaka Asian Film Festival 2020]

Heavy Craving   

大餓　 「Daikatsue」

Release Date: June 30th, 2019

Duration: 90 mins.

Director: Hsieh Pei-ju

Writer: Hsieh Pei-ju (Script), 

Starring: Tsai Jia-Yin, Samantha Ko, Yao Chang, Chang En-Wei, Lai Lene, Hsieh Tsu-wu,

OAFF IMDB

One woman’s battle to lose fat forms the basis of this heavy drama that comes wrapped with some light comedy as the weight of societal expectations on the physical appearance of people is skewered.