A win for writer-director Fu Tien-yu (傅天余) was a win for Taiwanese cinema on the global stage when she accepted the Mulberry Award for Best Screenplay for her touching movie, “Day Off” (本日公休), at the 25th Far East Film Festival (FEFF) in Udine, Italy.
Based on stories from the hairdressing career of Fu’s own mother, and the close relationships she formed with her clients, “Day Off” was one of nine films at FEFF showcasing the diversity and strength of Taiwan's cinema, past and present.
Fu Tien-yu’s heart-warming "Day Off" picked up the Mulberry Award for Best Screenplay at the Far East Film Festival. (FEFF photo)
“This story says something about the connection between people,” Fu said on accepting her award. “I believe the film connects us all.”
Eager cinephiles in Udine’s packed Teatro Nuovo celebrated the festival’s opening night with the violent and stylized “Bad Education” (黑的教育), a film that secured debut director and FEFF returnee Kai Ko (柯震東) a Best New Director nomination at last year’s Golden Horse Awards. Six films vied for awards in the competition section at FEFF, while three recently restored works of the New Taiwanese Cinema era were screened as part of the festival's retrospective section.
FEFF has been luring Asian filmmakers to Italy for 25 years now. In particular, it’s always been a place where the future of Taiwanese cinema is carefully fostered over nine days of screenings and events, which ended on Sunday.
New opportunities for Taiwanese producers and creatives appear each year as they look to fund their projects. Focus Asia, the festival’s industry section, teamed up with the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) to award the TAICCA/Focus Asia Co-production Award for a work in development. That prize of 10,000 euros (NT$339,000) was awarded to the Singaporean coming-of-age project “Amoeba.”
The relevance of this award at a festival for popular Asian cinema is crystal clear when examining the importance of Taiwanese cinema in terms of the regional landscape.
“The power of Taiwanese film has the most impact on Southeast Asia and Hong Kong,” explained “More Than Blue” producer Rita Chuang (莊淳淳) on the sidelines of this year’s FEFF. “An advantage of Taiwanese cinema is the talent, like directors, producers, actors, and actresses. They can work and travel all over Asia.”
The case Chuang made was proved right at the festival, where Taiwanese actor Wu Kang-ren’s (吳慷仁) transfixing performance as a deaf undocumented worker in Jin Ong’s (王禮霖) debut feature “Abang Adik” (富都青年) helped the Malaysian director secure three of the festival’s five awards.
Cheng Wei-hao’s comedy "Marry My Dead Body" was a hit with audiences in Udine, Italy. (FEFF photo)
Taiwanese films at FEFF also demonstrated the universal appeal of Taiwanese cinema, from content to style, regardless of the specificity of the story. “Marry My Dead Body” (關於我和鬼變成家人的那件事), Cheng Wei-hao’s (程偉豪) supernatural comedy about the unlikely friendship between a straight man and the ghost of a gay man forced to help each other, further exemplifies the creativity of Taiwanese filmmakers today.
“Marry My Dead Body” brings together traditional cultural elements like a ghost marriage with recent developments in Taiwan, like the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019. Although best known for his horror features, the director’s comedic prowess profoundly resonated with the FEFF audience, bringing some of the largest laughs of the festival while providing a sentimental undercurrent to its humor.
“A common value of humanity is loving each other, and love should have no borders and no gender. This is exactly what I wanted to convey by the end of this story,” Cheng said.
On the opposite end of the genre spectrum, “Day Off” showed the impact of generous and loving relationships as they connect across cultures and countries. This was a point Fu conveyed in her Mulberry Award acceptance speech, which was greeted by thunderous applause.
Fu masterfully confronts tensions between different generations of a Taiwanese family in today’s productivity-driven world. It also shows the ways in which prioritizing interpersonal relationships can overcome these barriers.
The other three films covered topics distinct to Taiwan, its history, and its people, showcasing Taiwanese directors’ acute awareness of sociopolitical issues.
Tseng Ying-ting (曾英庭) presented his gritty police thriller "The Abandoned” (查無此心), his debut feature but his third project concerning migrant workers in Taiwan. Director Zero Chou (周美玲) brought “Untold Herstory” (流麻溝十五號) to FEFF, an epic historical fiction film about the harrowing experiences women faced on Green Island during the White Terror years.
Gaga (哈勇家) by Laha Mebow (陳潔瑤), considered to be one of the first Indigenous Taiwanese women directors, depicts an intimate and grounded portrait of an Indigenous Atayal family after the death of its patriarchal figure. With more than 50% of the dialogue in the Atayal language, the film uses nonprofessional actors with no formalized script.
Laha Mebow captured headlines when she was named Best Director at the 59th Golden Horse Awards, thereby becoming the first Taiwanese woman and first Indigenous woman to lift the prestigious trophy.
The hunger to produce and consume exceptional Taiwanese creative content does not stop at FEFF, nor does it stop at film. Chuang has high expectations for the future of not merely cinema, but also all forms of Taiwanese media.
“My goal is really to make Taiwanese TV series become more international,” she said during a panel at Focus Asia. “We need to prove to Netflix and all the international audiences that Taiwan is capable of doing TV series similar to Korean TV series. Not only Korea can do that. Taiwan can also do this, too.”
Fu Tien-yu (center) meets the FEFF audience after the screening of "Day Off." (FEFF photo)