Director │Lucy HUANG
Producer │ZHANG Yue
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021, the world is quickly shifting from traditional, brick-and-mortar businesses to electronic commerce. And the once-prosperous Hanzheng Street, Wuhan is facing an unprecedented economic downturn.
The 68-year-old Big Eyes Missy uses live streaming to garner a group of loyal fans during the pandemic and becomes a fashion icon in Hanzheng Street. Her worsening health condition reminds her that it is time for her to step down, but as she feels responsible for her business company, she couldn’t call it quits.
Born in the 70s, President Peng decides to establish a new local brand in the neighborhood. She wishes to transform the clothing industry’s negative perception of the Wuhan Market but must battle her self-doubt as she encounters the difficulties of entrepreneurship.
Born in 1989, Qin wants to expand the production of her factory this winter and lead the business to a higher level. However, she struggles to balance the need of her 7-year-old daughter for companionship with the increasing pressure of running her factory.
The story follows the lives and journeys of these three women and how they struggle and thrive in their dilemmas.
Director, Producer │Laha Mebow
Zu-jun is living at the tribe with altitude of 1200-meter, where people mainly grow cabbages, a typical TAYAL tribe of mountains. He’s quite thin and small among the same age but inside he has an old indigenous spirit. He never leaves the tribe and has been living in the TAYAL culture. His sound family is rare at the tribe and parents are diligent for economic stability. Zu-jun is feeling lost about leaving the tribe for high school.
Zi-ning’s tribe is bedside the sea, the same one with the director. She got no parents, growing up in the charity, was brought to the tribe by his uncle after junior high school. She hopes she could act like indigenous. She uses unisex appearance to cover up her sensitive heart.
Director │ Louis HOTHOTHOT
Producer │ ZHAO Jia
1.83M tall, weighing 200 kgs, Laurel BURNS moved from the US to Beijing to pursue her dream of becoming an actress.
As the pandemic aggravated, Beijing was put under lockdown, and Laurel in turn lost any opportunity to work or to perform. Her life hit the bottom overnight, and loneliness started eating away at her.
Laurel started to indulge in gluttony and sex. She ate all sorts of things, dated with various people; no matter they were married, had a foot fetish, or if it was a toy boy, a cynical Uyghur young man, or a civil servant that desired to migrate to another country...they offered each other brief solace, then went their separate ways as day dawned.
The pandemic ends, and the world will not be the same as before. How will Laurel’s dream evolve?
Director │YE Bing-jun, Summer YANG
Producer │ Summer YANG
When Adi was four, his mother ran away because she was abused. Adi’s father has been working on temp jobs in the city. For years, Adi has been lacking parental care.
He is eager to find the sparkles in his lonely world. Adi loves his scooter. The biker friends and scooters keep him company instead of his family. Adi is too young to explain why he likes to dress in women’s clothing. But, the happiness feels so real for him whenever he dresses up and gets more attention. He is rather be despised by others than being forgotten.
The reality and poverty force Adi to seek survival in big cities. Meanwhile, Adi’s long-lost mother reached out and wants to reunite with him. Adi reevaluates his life and wants to make peace with himself before making the decision...
Director │Nina XIE
Producer │XIAO Long
88-year old Grandpa ZU lives a simple, idyllic life by the river with his cattle. The oldest one has been with ZU for 16 years. ZU cherishes the aged cow as it brought tranquility to his life since it was purchased and helped him send her granddaughter into college. But filial piety swings ZU’s granddaughter and daughter to another direction – they wanted ZU to quit herding and selling the old cow while they make ends meet by working in a city. Grandpa ZU continuously puts off this offer, knowing that this old buddy gets to live as long as he herds her by the river day after day. As the intergenerational tension builds, a dramatic turn of events arrives with a earthmoving truck at the river...
Director │GU Xue
Producer │SHEN Jian-hang
GAN Hua-ge, an educator that had obtained his Ph.D. from Tsinghua University, has been engaged in education for more than 20 years.
He believes that education can break the boundaries between discipline and age. and that the basic education from elementary to high school can be completed in five to six years.
LEE Jing-jing, who comes from a multi-child family in rural Hunan to Beijing to look for work; WANG Xiao-chun whose mother gave birth to her when she was still unmarried; WANG Tian-yu, whose father was handicapped from a car accident and whose mother left shortly after he was born. The three of them came to Beijing and were under the care of GAN Hua-ge, the educator.
The three children find that the new way of education is different from the traditional method. Even though they try to adapt but still feel a lot of pressure. At the same time, Mr. GAN also discovers the various problems that had formed in their upbringing...
Director │HONG Yi-lin
Producer │ GUO Xiao-dong
The story takes place in the countryside of Fujian Province, In the nineties in the context of family planning, influenced by a preference for sons over daughters, WU Yachun and his wife wanted to have a son but they couldn’t afford to pay the fine, so he sent his two daughters away. After 30 years, the eldest daughter who WU Yachun sent off, returned to the native family with her daughter after divorce. WU Yachun is under pressure from society and family for sending her daughter away. The documentary tells the story of the violent enforcement of the one-child policy. There were induced labor babies who cried when they were induced, The history of blood and tears, the village hundred years of trees to witness everything.
Director │HSIAO Chu-chen
Producer │Ben CHEN
Fifty years has passed since the genesis of the first Intel microchip in 1971. Ever since that, the said technology has been developing at a rapid pace. Microchips became the backbone of modern society. The technology’s influence even extends to national defense and aerospace engineering. Taiwan supplies more than 65% of the global contracted chips. The island’s industrial transformation started in 1971. Now nearly 50 years later, the semiconductor supply chain may be playing an intricate role in the island’s geopolitical status.
Director │TAN Mo
Producer │ LI Shan-shan
After staying in Poland for seven years, Mo will spend her first Chinese New Year at home. At the age of 30s, she’s still single. The traditional Chinese physiognomy believes female with mole under eyes will bring bad luck to their husband. Her mother is worried and implores her to remove the mole under her eyes. Her grandpa pays a visit, but in fact to urge her to get married. Under intense pressure, Mo is assailed by self-doubt. So, she decides to hold the camera and explore the reasons why she has stayed single for many years; Falling in love with a younger man is supposed to bring some hope to her life, but after a short period of happiness, the fact broke Mo’s love dream. When the warning bells start ringing, the unexpected breast cancer sparks a deep self-examination to Mo.
Director │ZHAO Qian
Producer │Alice YOU
Executive Producer │ Patrick Mao HUANG
In a small village, Wuzhuang, Dongyang has been suffering from schizophrenia for years. The only family he had was his sick and old mother. Their family and relatives abandoned them and moved away.
Dongyang was convinced that he is a famous music producer, but his mother could not care less. As Dongyang’s condition worsen, his mother hads to hide outside all day long to avoid being beaten by her son during his mental breakdowns. Eventually, she was killed by her son during another horrifying mental breakdown of his. After killing his mother, Dongyang was sent to a local mental institute to receive treatment.
After his slow recovery, Dongyang has returned to Wuzhuang to live but this time all by himself. Where will life take him from here...
Director │Jean-Robert THOMANN
Producer │Garance HUANG
ZHANG Meng-yi is a 47 year-old Taiwanese opera actress who, in 2018, suddenly faced a big turning point: she was appointed leader of Taiwanese opera troupe Hsintrun by national star LIAO Qiongzhi. Actress, teacher, troupe leader, the film reveals the various faces of ZHANG Meng-yi who sees the pressure mounting in his daily life. On stage, she often sings and cries. On the daily life, concentration in work, joys and sorrows draw the portrait of this actress who opens for us the doors to her world, that of Taiwanese opera.
Director │Tina XU
Producer │ZHANG Xin-wei
After Sam’s village burned to the ground by the Taliban, he and his family fled for Iran, becoming refugees. At the age of 13, he takes the 120 dollars he’s saved from working in a fruit warehouse to travel westward through eight countries. All along the way, he runs from bullets, hides into shipping containers, and swims to the Greek shore after his boat has capsized in the middle of the night.
Sam arrives in London, and many years later, we meet and fell in love. However, Sam can’t escape the shadow of memory and the faces of those he met along the way. Ten years later, we decide to embark once more to retrace his path through Europe together, in order to face old ghosts and find new courage for the future.
Director │SUN Guo-hu
Producer │SHI Xiao-an
The adolescent sisters CHEN Zixin and CHEN Kexin are twins who have been studying Yue opera since they were little. Their parents wanted to send them to a professional troupe in order to give them a more systematic education in Yue opera. For that purpose, they put in a lot of effort.
Growth Hormone
Height is the first threshold to become a Yue Opera actor. In order to overcome their genetic limitation, their parents chose to inject them with growth hormone. It might seem inhumane, but it has long been a common practice among the candidates. The shot is the substance that helps them grow quickly as much as the cardiac stimulant that helps parents to realize their own ideals.
Contracts and Diplomas
Zhejiang Xiaobaihua Yue Opera Troupe is the best Yue Opera troupe in China. It is also the only way to become a top Yue Opera actor. However, if one chooses to enter Xiaobaihua, one is required to sign a 15-year contract with the troupe and accept the terms such as they are only allowed to have a secondary school education. The parents weighed their options and eventually reluctantly signed the agreement. A year after entering the troupe, it was faced with a system reform. The allure of traditional opera is gradually fading, and there’s very little future aspect to it.
Competition and Chances
Upon entering the youth training program, even though the students appear to be on the same starting line, but their family backgrounds and social connections do have an influenced on their development. The sisters discussed their respective competitors, as classmates, parents, teachers, and the troupe compete for the few spots in the spotlight. Their professional ability is no longer the only variable that affects the result. As their roles in the troupe change, the sisters also begin to develop different personalities, and their views on the world and the future also begin to change...
Director │ Elvis A-Liang LU
Producer │Stefano CENTINI, Emma LEE
The story revolves around a group in an indigenous Paiwan community called A-DJU, which literally means sisters but has come to designate instead cross and trans-gender men, recently becoming a well-known word in the indigenous societies.
Gender issues have long been a taboo in indigenous communities, but in 2018, when same-sex marriage was allowed in Taiwan, traditional societies have been swept with misunderstandings and discriminations. The film focuses on a group of A-DJU who decided to put up a music festival dedicated to this culture, and use it to confront and change the traditional values of their community. Can their courage inspire and unite their tribes again?
Director │ WONG Siu-pong
Producer │ CHAN Tsz-ki
How would life be if it ended in your youthful twenties? Ceci set forth on the journey to Germany for a drug test to fight against a rare and incurable disease with a group of patients from Hong Kong. They pinned their hopes on “ONC 201”, a drug which has not been accepted by the Hong Kong system. At the final stage of her life, Ceci rebuilds her distant relationship with her mother, and responds to her birth, her growth and the ultimate denial as the truth of life and death unfolds.
If life is destined to be miserable, why do we have to be born and exist?
Director │ Jenn LEE Yuen-ching
Producer │ Joanna WANG
There used to be bristled with statues of political leaders in Taiwan, which is rarely seen in the world. Following the political change after 1990, the statues had been removed one after another. Unlike other countries, where statues no longer worshipped had got destroyed, there are nearly three hundred abandoned statues in Taiwan kept in the park in a small town. They are not appealing anymore, whether made by some famous artist or just cheap replicas. Comparing with those more than 700 statues of CHIANG Kai-shek, however, they have escaped the issue about retention/abolition, and seem to be content to hold a small corner. Relying on people’s thoughts and curiosity about the history of the nation as well as personal memory, they have become an uncanny post-modern landscape of their own.
Director │ FAN Li-xin
Producer │ XU Qiu-li
ZHANG Hong is an eternal hassler who comes from a poor family and lost his sight when he was only 21-year-old. While his wife aspires to a peaceful life, ZHANG Hong keeps trying to be successful in order to prove himself and to bring a better life for his family.
Now he works as a blind masseur in Tibet, a typical work for a disabled person in China, but the 45-year-old family man want to try something not so typical: climbing Mount Everest. By preparing this journey for the past five years he hopes to finally turn his luck around. Physical challenges, lack of financial support, and concerns from family and friends are all dilemmas on the road to his dream.
In March 2021, ZHANG Hong finally made the trip and set out for Nepal, embarking on the journey to realize his dream. But what awaits him on the Himalayas was bad weather, danger than ever ice falls, and a worsening conflict with his only Chinese guide. Will he summit and turn his fate into luck?
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