Director | CHEN Kuan-chun
Producer | Rooney CHANG
The story of three transgender men who risked everything to become their ideal selves, experiencing rebirth through adversity. Their lives are extraordinary because they have lived through two genders.
Director | Eugenia LIU
Producer | ZHANG Bo-fan
A single mom decided to design a perfect baby with the help of modern technology. However, Ye has never thought about what it might cost to create a new life.
Director | ZHENG Qing-yue
Producer | YAO Lu
In 1983, to become a woman, Zhang Kesha secretly underwent the first gender reassignment surgery in mainland China. After a lifetime of wandering, she yearns to be truly seen.
Director | ZU Guang-ning, XU Wei
Producer | LI Da-xing
Shanghai socialite ZHANG Sha engaged in post-war charity work in Syria but was faced with various kinds of pressures. How will she balance her personal value realization and social responsibilities?
Director | Yih Wen Chen
Producer | Yih Wen Chen、Mandy Marahimin
Director, Producer | Ivonne Kani (Vonny Kanisius)
Conflicted between her own principles and her Chinese-Indonesian family ideals, a daughter filmmaker embarks on her kind of “Journey to the West” to answer the
question that linger inside her.
Director | Beatrice LEONG
Beatrice, an autistic filmmaker and activist, turns the camera around to reveal a lifetime of misdiagnoses and psychiatric institutionalization. She challenges the misconceptions and discrimination against girls like her.
Director │ WEN De-chuan
Producer │ HUO Jian-zhong
ZHANG Shi-wei, president of the Chengdu Mutual Aid Association for the Visually Impaired, has been doing public welfare for the blind and has formed a blind band. FENG Yi-ping daughter as a child because of disease blind, FENG Yi-ping divorce and ZHANG Shi-wei met love. Unlike ZHANG Shi-wei’s reticence, FENG Yi- ping’s character is straight like a young girl. Shortly after the two married, ZHANG Shi-wei was diagnosed with liver cancer, so FENG Yi-ping took over the burden of her husband and continued to work hard for the blind public welfare, and the love of the two people in their later years was sweeter.
Director │ Pony YIN
Producer │ DAI Yu-xin, WANG Cheng
Due to prolonged overfishing and environmental pollution, the fish ecosystem in China’s Yangtze River and its tributaries faced critical damage. In 2020, China launched the ‘Ten-Year Fishing Ban’ and ‘Fishermen Transition’ policies to safeguard and restore fish resources. It significantly changed Huai River fishermen’s lives in Bengbu, Anhui Province.
After their boats were forced demolition, fishermen were compelled to leave their aquatic homes. They not only lost their shelter but also their fishing skills, with insufficient compensation. The fishermen united to legally challenge the government, while adapting to their new life on land.
LIU Ji-tao, a fisherman, aimed unrealistically to be a TikTok star but burdened his wife, WANG Yue-qin, due to financial struggles. In three years, LIU faced career failures, bereavements, marital discord, and family dispersal, all while navigating life’s unpredictable currents.
Director │ SUN Yi-jie
Producer │ LIN Zan
This film focuses on the children of the “Black Hawks” who are spreading their basketball dreams in the depths of Daliang Mountain.
The film revolves around several team members, focusing on the left behind, deaf and mute children in Daliang Mountain, presenting the audience with the true mountain village and the process of children growing up in Daliang Mountain.
Through the contrast between the intensity and quality of training at home and abroad, as well as the investment restrictions, educational opportunities, and unequal quality of rural families. The camera present the stage wise confusion faced by young people in their life choices, and stares closer at the hardships, struggles, and expectations of their dreams under adversity.
Next, what awaits them is one life event after another that constantly relies on sports spirit to break through social class attributes.
Director, Producer │ CHEN Shuo
Unique Happiness City in Kunming became an abandoned and unfinished property project after construction stopped abruptly seven years ago, leaving behind decaying and unfinished structures. Impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic related life difficulties, the homeowners no longer want to wait passively and attempted to use public opinion to pressure the local government to resume the construction work. CHEN Yan-chun from Sichuan Province moved into the unfinished building with her six-year-old daughter and shared short videos of their lives on social media, drawing widespread attention and media coverage. Mounting public criticism forced local authorities to intervene. This catalysed a complex three-year struggle between the homeowners, the government, and various stakeholders. Determined to achieve their dream of homeownership, these families remained resilient, aiming to transform the doomed project into a victorious reality.
Director │ WONG Siu-pong
Producer │ Catherine CHAN
Three young women from Hong Kong were battling an aggressive brain cancer. While Ivy was bedridden, her boyfriend Asvin found ONC201 – an experimental drug from Germany. Tragically, Asvin held Ivy’s funeral a month after their hospital ward wedding. The drug couldn’t save her. Ceci was diagnosed just before turning 20. Her mother struggled with the idea of losing her. After her parents’ divorce, Ceci moved into a 170-square-foot apartment with her mother and grandmother. Learned about ONC201 from Asvin, Ceci and her mother pinned all hopes on it, but her body developed resistance soon. Being told to stop treatment felt like a death sentence. The remaining doses were given to Clare, who also saw the drug as her last resort. She has now survived for three years, without knowing what the future holds. In the face of death, what lessons must one learn, for themselves and for their loved ones?
Director, Producer │ Flora Ling-hwa HUANG
Producer │ CHEN Yu-jui
Picking oysters, taking good care of senior family and raising children in the village White Waters, three immigrant women have been carrying these daily burdens for two decades. The escape of drudgery life is through memories emerging at moments when one loses herself in daily triviality. They write about these moments on Facebook: childhood, work and life. Usual daily sunset reminded Hua of her teen’s playing with her siblings. Sounds made from Juan's riding scooter brought her to the past when selling breakfast with her mother. Huang, preparing meals every day, had the taste of her hometown far away. These memories, as an escape, keep them get going, and, as a trigger, summon their sensory feelings back at the time.
The film is about how one’s memories can soothe her in daily labors and iron out the wrinkles of migrated life. With a designed V.O. in protagonists’ mother tongue, it speaks fragments of their past and acts as a vehicle slowly navigating in the stream of memory.
Director │ Neko WANG
Producer │ Sydney LEE
“Why are there shares for men but not for women?” , “I am just fighting for my dignity” , “Is it a sin to be born a woman?”
These are their words. Their demand is simple: equality.
In rural China, it is common for women to be deprived of their land rights and homes, but their predicament is often invisible. Policies, village customary law, traditions, familial ties, marriage, and identity entangle their lives like cords. When they tried to uphold their legal rights, they were met with gaps in the law; and when they persisted (in their struggle for justice), they were treated as the “enemy” of the family or even the whole village.
By documenting three women and their families in different parts of China, the film shows the plight and struggle of women who have lost their land (and homes) to patriarchy. The problem of rural women’s land loss is a blind spot in China’s pursuit of gender equality and women’s liberation.
Director │CHEN Shi-xin, WU Kang
Producer │CHEN Shi-xin
After the functional extinction of albino dolphin, the only aquatic mammal left in Dongting-Poyang Lake basin is finless porpoise.
A group of former fishing bully started to cooperate with volunteers in 2016 and set up a cooperative patrol team to protect the ecology, patrolling daily and checking illegal fishing gears, but also became a “traitor” according to their peers. In order to protect natural resources, the government decided to start a decade-long “fishing ban”. The old way of life is about to change. How can a person change from being a taker of resources to a protector and renewer?
Director │SO Ka-ue
Producer │Catherine CHAN
The challenge of severely disabled people living in a city has steeled Ah Cheung’s will to fight for the rights to quality and independent living. Living in a wheelchair all his life, he overcame poverty and became an advocate for the disabled rights. He was awarded the Hong Kong Humanity Award and Medal of Honour.
People in society generally know very little about the disabled people’s needs. A lot of them were afraid of being checked-in to the hospital and left alone with very little support in the ward during COVID period. Ah Cheung insisted on speaking up for himself and his peers, using every breath of his deteriorating body.
Before Ah Cheung passed away, he had just started an unprecedented project in Hong Kong – to establish a library run by the disabled, serving all people. His life journey will tell the development of disabled people’s rights in the city.
Director │ XUE Xue
Director, Producer │Tarik NÚÑEZ
In the heart of Beijing, we find a man who is painting with his foot, in impressive and detailed traditional Chinese ink paintings. Surprisingly enough we are aware that this man despite his physical disability can be self-sufficient and extremely agile to use all kinds of electronic communication devices and basic instruments of daily use that allow him to be independent. Not only in his personal life but economically and in mobility traveling around the city, from his home to his workplace, which is a congested subway station.
A story of self-improvement that inspires the motivation to never give up on dreams despite adversity. A look into the life of an artist while organizing an exhibition that seeks to change people’s perception of disability by being recognized as an artist beyond his physical limitations. The determination of a man for overcoming all obstacles and not limit himself.
Director, Producer│Hansen LIN
Producer │ Micah FINK
Coach XU is a rural Chinese teacher at a charity school in a remote mountainous area. Three years ago, at a county-level football match, his team attracted the attention of the national education community. With a round of matches approaching, XU establishes a soccer home to provide his teammates with more training and nutrition. XIE is a 13-year-old girl in hopes of becoming a soccer coach like XU one day. Wu, at 15, is the former captain of the Yuanbao team who has been criticized by Coach XU in her daily training for having puppy love. They all doubt soccer, yet love soccer passively at the same time. Along with the impression of being a tender and dedicated teacher, Coach XU has great authority when it comes to motivating the girls on the soccer team. As the intervenor in the children’s growth path, XU is troubled by his own vulnerabilities, doubts, and regrets.
Director │DAI We
Producer │CHANG Tzu-hisang
In the only gym on Matsu Island, in the tin room on the top floor, a group of wrestlers listens to the whistle of the barracks.
The film revolves around the Matzu wrestling team, and tells the story of growing up on the dank island through the coaches who returned home, the brothers and sisters who were born with disadvantage, the teenagers who were confused and disorganized about the future, and the three brothers who communicated with their father in prison through the wrestling. Due to the remoteness of the geographical environment and the limitations of life itself, facing the sport of “wrestling”, it is not the success or failure that the world sees. In today's increasingly tense political situation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, what kind of future do they see in the narrow gap?
This is a story about life’s choices, about difficulties and exits, about persistence and perseverance.
Director │ZI Han
Producer │WANG Hui
A film fighting against fate about the destructive influence on a woman suffering from domestic abuse. Twenty years ago, Yongzhi, living in a remote village in southern China, had to make a hard choice, to die or to escape from her violent husband.
Even harder, she had to choose who to take among her three kids. Eventually, she took her younger daughter travelling thousands of miles away to northern China to make a living by planting white asparagus, leaving her eldest daughter aged 11 and son aged 4 at home. The consequences of abandoning kids left Yongzhi with a festering sense of guilt, whilst her three kids, now all grownups, tried hard to reconnect and reconcile.
The film offers an intimate insight into a broken family, but also touches upon a much wider issue of the struggle between the identity of being a woman and being a mother.
Director │FENG Jing
Producer │MA Tian-jun
You are what you eat. Besides sustaining our life, food could also be a starting point to solve problems and to rebuild relationships.
The food crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic is only a start, however it might lead to changes. A group of food change-makers are changing their life and our future by saving food.
Two apricots from hometown, one went into dust bin, the other one went through a zero waste journey which spread the longing for family and the gratitude for nature to more people. To save food is to save ourselves.
Director │YUAN Nan-hsi
Producer │DENG Zhi-ying
Yang Yang is a very strange person.
She is deaf but she does not like to hang out with deaf people.
She is gentle to her friends and lover, but she does not know how to get along with her own family.
She is addicted to extreme sports which might kill her any time. Has she ever felt afraid?
She has been a poor world nomad with super low materialistic desires. How long could she continue her life like this in a society of consumerism and entertainment?
She often mentioned the long-live freedom. Is the so-called freedom so precious? When will she stop her journey?
There are so many mysteries in Yang Yang which drives my filming for four years.
I followed YangYang’s life journey, and this also guided me to the answer of my own life.
Director, Producer │DENG Wei
As their family have been arrested due to their involvement in drug dealing, or they are away working, a dozen of children all live together at their uncle’s. Even though their personalities cannot be further apart, they do share their innocence and loveliness in common. They play together, and grow up in one another’s company.
As the New Year approaches, most of them are reunited with their parents. However, a girl, Mao Se-zuo, is not greeted by her mother, and is isolated in the festivity of the time of the year.
Not long after Se-zuo learns that her mother had been busted for infant trafficking. She is absolutely certain that this must be a mistake and wants to ask her mother for answers in person, but was stopped by the elders. After numerous futile attempts to convince the elders to let her go, she decides to just leave home. When she was found by her family, she is greeted by the news that her cousin had died in an accident. Eventually, her quest to find her mother is gradually put aside.
Director │HUANG Yi
Producer │YUAN Xiao-bing
Refusing to endure domestic abuse any more, YAO, a young mother sued for divorce.
Three months later, her son was violently snatched and hidden by her husband.
She turned in all the evident proving domestic violence to the police and her husband was kept in detention for 12 days.
She hoped that the second divorce proceedings would result in a divorce and custody of the child. But it seemed not promising so she negotiated with her husband and got a chance to talk to her child through video call.
Director │Paul ZHOU, Zhang Yi-huan
Producer │ SHAO Han-bing
PAN Mei-hao is an optimistic and motivated young woman and wheelchair user who, at the age of 27, has been living independently in Beijing for four years. Although she is passionate about her work and loved by her boss and clients, she still faces strange looks from others. Faced with life, she still walks in her wheelchair; faced with society, she walks with people with disabilities like her; faced with the future, she is determined to gain a foothold in Beijing. How does a wheelchair girl with a monthly salary of around 5,000 take root in the huge city of Beijing? The last two years have been the peak of her career rise and an important turning point in her life.
Director │Xing ZHANG
Producer │ YUAN Ye
The smart Wei and the sensitive Lu are friends who in a special school in Guangxi. They joined a choir that was not understood by the villagers––a special choir made up of group of hearing–– impaired children like them, was formed because of Wei’s “Ah~” voice a few years ago, which shocked the young artists LI Bo and ZHANG Yong who came for a collect folk songs’s trip.
In 2018,they went to the Beijing Concert Hall with their special song. audience were moved to tears. Lu was sobbing in the backstage with partners, “We are the best singers!”
Wei and Lu become more confident and happy, appearing on the most famous TV channel and making many new friends. They are no longer discriminated but become the pride of their family and village.
However, the children still faced of dropping out or marrying early, their lives did not change. The artists find that singing is just occasion, better education will give them more choices, so they began to fight for transfer children to Beijing, But the philosophy / cultural differences of the children’s parents caused conflict...
Director │CHIANG Meng-chien
Producer │TSENG Chun-fang
The “Adorable Residence Project” looks for the possibility of a stable residence as a Taipei Drifters. We explored different housing options such as renting house, market housing and social housing. Finally, we see the possibility of practice in the “co-housing”, and we decided to establish our own Cooperatives and co-housing.
In the second season, we will set up our own cooperative, finding partners, making constitution of the cooperative, etc., promote co-housing in events and collect partners who has the same vision. At the same time, we will record the development and progress of other co-housing groups in Taiwan. Meanwhile connect with successful foreign co-housing cases to absorb successful experience. At the end of the second season, we hope our cooperative will be formally established, which was the first step to form an ideal residence as co-housing.
Director, Producer │ CHEN Wei-cih
A Penghu beach cleaning adventure to solve the Styrofoam problem has begun. From the two studios at the beginning to the call of environmental protection fighters on the Internet, they set foot on the small outlying islands of Penghu, including Huayu and Birds. Yu, Jiangjun, Wangan, Penghu main island, etc., take a beach cleaning adventure along the way, and difficulties in the course of this adventure also follow. Is the carbon footprint of beach cleaning itself even less environmentally friendly? Where should the rubbish go after the beach cleaning? These problems are like waves hitting the shore, impacting this beach cleaning trip.
Director, Producer │WANG Lei
In response to the protection of back-necked cranes, the villagers migrated to Huashibancun, Hunan. Throughout the years, they have acclimated and have developed a method to cultivate the land here. In 2001, the sudden arrival of wild Asiatic elephants had broken their tranquility. The elephants have pretty much settled down in this village. Year after year, they fed on the villagers’ crop. The inhabitants had been ordered by the government to protect the animal, and yet they were not given the compensation for their losses. Day after day, the villagers can only rely on Diao, the monitoring agent, to monitor the elephants’ movement to look for a safe window to go out. Diao’s own brother also struggled about whether to continue farming. In the mean time, his financial status deteriorates, and gradually, despair is beginning to set in.
Director │DONG Jun, MIN Tao
Producer │ YU Ya-qin
Film from to keep a record of the survival conditions of individual in-depth involvement by the subject in later life, a effective with the establishment of the type, its itself is a kind of care for the elderly. The film starts from the issue of “old-age care” to the observation of the material and spiritual aspects of contemporary Chinese people. Through specific characters and stories, it reflects the response and thinking of human beings in the face of loneliness and death. It not only has a strong sense of problem, but also puts into the author’s philosophical thinking on the ultimate issues of life.
