Taiwanese films being showcased at Filmart include a fantasy horror, social drama and culinary dark comedy that spans four millennia.
96 Minutes
Dir. Hung Tzu-Husan
Starring Austin Lin, Vivian Sung and Jacob Wang, this action thriller takes place on a high-speed train travelling from Taipei in the north to Kaohsiung in the south of the island. When a bomb is found, the disposal must be handled within the 96-minute travelling time, putting the passengers to the test. A summer release is scheduled for the film, which has been nine years in the making. Director Hung, an action and crime genre specialist, previously directed 2018’s The Scoundrels, winner of best action choreography at the Golden Horse Awards, and 2023 Disney+ seriesTaiwan Crime Stories. WOWing Entertainment’s credits include The Rope Curse horror trilogy.
Contact: Jeff Tsou, WOWing Entertainment
Family Matters
Dir. Pan Ke-Yin
This feature debut is an extension of director Pan’s 2021 Golden Horse-nominated short film My Sister. It continues to explore the lives of a brother and sister as well as their parents over four time periods. The main cast returns to the same roles, including Queena Huang, Tseng Jing-Hua, Lan Wei-Hua and Alexia Kao. Pan is an editor-turned-director whose work blends humour with harshness to capture the subtleties of everyday life and focus on the complexities of family, identity and unspoken emotions. It received its world premiere at Osaka Asian Film Festival on March 15.
Contact: Desmond Yang, Mandarin Vision
Fuxi: Joy In Four Chapters
Dir. Qiu Jiongjiong
Following his first fiction feature A New Old Play, winner of Locarno’s special jury prize in 2021, mainland Chinese director Qiu returns with a dark comedic tale of Sichuan cuisines. The story spans four millennia and is told through four festivities that see the living and the dead relish in everyday culinary delights. Lee Kang Sheng, Lee Hong-Chi, Annie Chen and Wang Talu head the cast. Ding Ningyuan, Zhao Jin and David Tang serve as producers for this Taiwan-France-Japan co-production. It is presented as a HAF work-in-progress project at Filmart. Director Qiu is also a contemporary artist and made documentary Mr Zhang Believes, which premiered at Locarno in 2015.
Contact: Zhao Jin, Midnight Blur Films
Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo
Dir. Tsai Chia-Ying
Starring Hong Kong’s Angela Yuen alongside Jasper Liu and Tsao Yu Ning from Taiwan, this fantasy horror film is inspired by an urban legend about a man in a yellow raincoat who directs lost hikers down the wrong path to meet their deaths in the mountains. Formerly titled Trapped In Yellow, it is produced by Hank Tseng who is known for the Tag Along horror trilogy. Key backers include Tomorrow Together Capital, Chunghwa Telecom and CMC Entertainment. Tsai previously directed Visitors, the closing film of 2020’s Kaohsiung Film Festival. He is also a sound designer and composer.
Contact: Eric Chou, GrX Studio
Suffocation
Dir. Louis Chan
Billed as a 90-minute single-shot horror film, the project revolves around the swimming team of an elite high school plagued by a sinister curse. When some of them leak a video of an affair between a teacher and a student, they unleash a chain of deadly events that force them to confront betrayal and despair. Chan previously directed 49 Days and executive-directed Han Dan. Production company Pegasus Entertainment has made a string of successful horror films, including The Bridge Curse and its sequel, The Funeral and Minxiong Haunted House.
Contact: Rosa Lo, Pegasus Entertainment
That Burning House
Dir. Tsai Yin-Chuan
This social drama highlights the plight of neglected children in halfway homes who face a bleak future. Told in three chapters, the story revolves around an enthusiastic social worker, a boy abandoned by his mother and a young man recruited for phone scams to repay family debts. The cast is led by Tseng Jing-hua and Fandy Fan. Tsai is an award-winning writer and director, known for her social sensitivities. Her previous works include 2012 feature debut Stilt and 2016’s Packages From Daddy as well as Taiwan’s first firefighting drama series Tears On Fire, which won an audience award at the Golden Bell Awards in 2022.
Contact: Hope Content Marketing
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