The feature “Tales of Taipei” is a tribute to the low-pressure, culturally rich city, which has been shaped by its regional neighbors, taken in diverse peoples and distilled the multiple competing influences into a messy, happy-go-lucky morass.
Produced by Bowie Tsang and Amy Ma, the film calls on 10 directors hailing from Malaysia, France, Bhutan and Hong Kong, and Taiwanese locals Yin Cheng-han and Remii Huang to contribute.
“Everything is possible in Taiwan, everything exits side by side,” says Tsang, who was born in Hong Kong. “We have old Chinese myths. We believe in the afterlife. Churches exist side by side with temples. We are still trying to figure out how to tell our stories.”
As in the film, juxtapositions exist throughout the Taiwan film industry. Theatrical B.O. improved last year, but from a low 2022 base. Last year, Taiwan productions increased market share from 10% to nearly 16%, helping to lift the...
Produced by Bowie Tsang and Amy Ma, the film calls on 10 directors hailing from Malaysia, France, Bhutan and Hong Kong, and Taiwanese locals Yin Cheng-han and Remii Huang to contribute.
“Everything is possible in Taiwan, everything exits side by side,” says Tsang, who was born in Hong Kong. “We have old Chinese myths. We believe in the afterlife. Churches exist side by side with temples. We are still trying to figure out how to tell our stories.”
As in the film, juxtapositions exist throughout the Taiwan film industry. Theatrical B.O. improved last year, but from a low 2022 base. Last year, Taiwan productions increased market share from 10% to nearly 16%, helping to lift the...
- 5/14/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
China-based international sales agent Rediance has acquired world sales rights to “The Falling Sky,” a feature documentary which will premiere next month at Cannes in the Directors Fortnight section. Directed by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, the film makes the Amazonian Yanomami people its stars.
Based on the book of the same title by shaman and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa and French anthropologist Bruce Albert, “The Falling Sky” portrays the indigenous community of Watorikɨ as it engages in a funeral rite known as the reahu, which is a collective effort to hold up the sky and prevent it from falling.
The film stands as a trenchant shamanic critique of the destruction of the Yanomami’s way of life caused by the intrusions of the napë, the white prospectors and the so-called civilized world into the Yanomami territory.
“The spellbinding images, meticulous sound design, and powerful words of Davi...
Based on the book of the same title by shaman and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa and French anthropologist Bruce Albert, “The Falling Sky” portrays the indigenous community of Watorikɨ as it engages in a funeral rite known as the reahu, which is a collective effort to hold up the sky and prevent it from falling.
The film stands as a trenchant shamanic critique of the destruction of the Yanomami’s way of life caused by the intrusions of the napë, the white prospectors and the so-called civilized world into the Yanomami territory.
“The spellbinding images, meticulous sound design, and powerful words of Davi...
- 4/23/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
The independent juries of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival early Saturday unveiled their picks of the best movies at the 2024 Berlinale.
Matthias Glasner’s German family epic Sterben (Dying), and the Iranian feature My Favourite Cake from directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, both of which are considered frontrunners for the top prize at the official festival ceremony on Saturday night, received multiple awards for the indie juries, as did Dag Johan Haugerud’s Norwegian drama Sex, a critical favorite from this year’s Panorama sidebar.
Sterben, which follows a classical conductor (played by Lars Eidinger) and his very dysfunctional family, won the best film honor from the guild of German arthouse cinemas and the top prize awarded by the jury of Berliner Morgenpost readers representing the Berlin newspaper.
My Favourite Cake, a quiet drama about a 70-year-old widow who takes a chance on new love, won the Fipresci...
Matthias Glasner’s German family epic Sterben (Dying), and the Iranian feature My Favourite Cake from directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, both of which are considered frontrunners for the top prize at the official festival ceremony on Saturday night, received multiple awards for the indie juries, as did Dag Johan Haugerud’s Norwegian drama Sex, a critical favorite from this year’s Panorama sidebar.
Sterben, which follows a classical conductor (played by Lars Eidinger) and his very dysfunctional family, won the best film honor from the guild of German arthouse cinemas and the top prize awarded by the jury of Berliner Morgenpost readers representing the Berlin newspaper.
My Favourite Cake, a quiet drama about a 70-year-old widow who takes a chance on new love, won the Fipresci...
- 2/24/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
German filmmaker Nele Wohlatz’s “Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which had its world premiere on Saturday in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, tells a story about the search for a sense of belonging in a foreign country.
It starts with Kai, a young Taiwanese woman with a broken heart, arriving at a Brazilian beach resort for a holiday. Here, her life crosses paths with a group of Chinese migrants living in a luxury tower block, and in particular a young woman called Xiaoxin, who accepts her fate, and Fu Ang, who is working in an umbrella store when we meet him but harbors ambitions to become wealthy.
Xiaoxin writes about her life on a series of postcards, which are never sent and are eventually discarded. Kai finds them and reads them, provided a connection between the two women. At one point, we stop following Kai and...
It starts with Kai, a young Taiwanese woman with a broken heart, arriving at a Brazilian beach resort for a holiday. Here, her life crosses paths with a group of Chinese migrants living in a luxury tower block, and in particular a young woman called Xiaoxin, who accepts her fate, and Fu Ang, who is working in an umbrella store when we meet him but harbors ambitions to become wealthy.
Xiaoxin writes about her life on a series of postcards, which are never sent and are eventually discarded. Kai finds them and reads them, provided a connection between the two women. At one point, we stop following Kai and...
- 2/21/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
There are so many questions surrounding the search for identity and one's own place under the sun that I can relate to in Nele Wohlatz' dreamy drama “Sleep With Your Open Eyes” that I don't even know where to start. As an immigrant who changed houses so many times that every move involved more costs, logistic planning and emotional investment than it was healthy, I felt an instant connection with the film's protagonists who dream big, while struggling to make ends meet pressured by the big question of where they really belong to. I also understood that Wohlatz, who herself has lived for 12 years far away from her native Germany, to study and work in Argentina, knew how to tell the story of a double-sided cultural alienation and solidarity among those ‘lost in translation', right from the film's opening scene which didn't even reveal much about what was going to happen.
- 2/21/2024
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
Berlin: Taiwan’s ‘Shambhala,’ ‘Sleep With Your Eyes Open’ Producers Join Forces for Film, TV Venture
Two Taiwan-based production companies with features in this week’s Berlin Film Festival have joined forces to launch new venture, Long Hu Bao × An Attitude.
Taiwan’s Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao International Entertainment, is one of eight co-producers on main competition film “Shambhala,” from Nepal’s Min Bahadur Bham.
Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao is also one of three co-producers on Brazilian title “Sleep With Your Eyes Open” (aka “Dormir de olhos abertos”) directed by Nele Wohlatz, which debuts in Berlin’s Encounters section.
While the two companies will remain legally separate, the collaboration also brings together Lee Lieh, Roger Huang, and Justine O., three of Taiwan’s most experienced producers. They aim to continue their expansion into international co-productions and span both film and TV.
“We see it as three generations of producers becoming a strong alliance that joins together the resources of Asia – Edward Yang’s Taiwanese new wave,...
Taiwan’s Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao International Entertainment, is one of eight co-producers on main competition film “Shambhala,” from Nepal’s Min Bahadur Bham.
Yi Tiao Long Hu Bao is also one of three co-producers on Brazilian title “Sleep With Your Eyes Open” (aka “Dormir de olhos abertos”) directed by Nele Wohlatz, which debuts in Berlin’s Encounters section.
While the two companies will remain legally separate, the collaboration also brings together Lee Lieh, Roger Huang, and Justine O., three of Taiwan’s most experienced producers. They aim to continue their expansion into international co-productions and span both film and TV.
“We see it as three generations of producers becoming a strong alliance that joins together the resources of Asia – Edward Yang’s Taiwanese new wave,...
- 2/20/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Tucked deep into Don DeLillo’s Underworld is an exchange between the novel’s protagonist, Nick Shay, and one of his teachers, a Jesuit priest. It concerns language. The priest, to make a point about the boy’s abysmally poor vocabulary, taunts him to name the parts that make up his shoe. Aglet, grommet, vamp, quarter; Nick has never heard of them, but instead of shrugging it off, he turns the lecture into a wake-up call. He runs back to his dorm wanting to look up words, memorize them, spell them, learn them––for this, DeLillo quips in one of his most fulminating sentences, “is the only way in the world you can escape the things that made you.” Time and again during Nele Wohlatz’s Sleep with Your Eyes Open, I found myself going back to that line. Language serves in Wohlatz’s cinema the same function it plays...
- 2/19/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Taiwan International Co-Funding Program (Ticp) from Taiwan Creative Content Agency (Taicca) continues to make an impact at the 74th Berlinale. Black Tea and Shambhala enter the main competition, while Sleep With Your Eyes Open competes at Encounters. Festival veteran Tsai Ming-Liang scored two official selections with his latest documentary Abiding Nowhere in Berlinale Special and The Wayward Cloud at Berlinale Classics Special.
Black Tea is Abderrahmane Sissako's follow up feature after Timbuktu with Taiwan as a key location and two Taiwanese actors Chang Han from A Brighter Summer Day and Wu Ke-Xi of Nina Wu playing alongside Nina Mélo in this cross-cultural romance. The film also received investment from Kaohsiung Film Fund.
Also in the main competition is Shambhala, the second feature from Nepal's Min Bahadur Bham, which sees a woman journey across the Himalayas to prove her innocence. Liao Ching-Sung and Roger Huang are two executive producers from...
Black Tea is Abderrahmane Sissako's follow up feature after Timbuktu with Taiwan as a key location and two Taiwanese actors Chang Han from A Brighter Summer Day and Wu Ke-Xi of Nina Wu playing alongside Nina Mélo in this cross-cultural romance. The film also received investment from Kaohsiung Film Fund.
Also in the main competition is Shambhala, the second feature from Nepal's Min Bahadur Bham, which sees a woman journey across the Himalayas to prove her innocence. Liao Ching-Sung and Roger Huang are two executive producers from...
- 2/16/2024
- by Adam Symchuk
- AsianMoviePulse
Cine Argentino Unido, the new coalition group representing Argentinian film organisations, has called for a show of solidarity in Berlin amid an arts funding crisis in the South American country.
On Thursday the group issued a statement in which it hailed Argentina’s artistic presence in the Berlinale this year.
“What should be a source of pride for our entire industry, however, comes in a context of alarm and emergency for the cinema and culture of our country,” the statement said, in reference to firebrand president Javier Milei’s efforts to course-correct a stricken economy buckling under hyperinflation, huge debt,...
On Thursday the group issued a statement in which it hailed Argentina’s artistic presence in the Berlinale this year.
“What should be a source of pride for our entire industry, however, comes in a context of alarm and emergency for the cinema and culture of our country,” the statement said, in reference to firebrand president Javier Milei’s efforts to course-correct a stricken economy buckling under hyperinflation, huge debt,...
- 2/15/2024
- ScreenDaily
Nele Wohlatz’s “Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which has its world premiere in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival, has debuted its trailer (below). Rediance has taken world sales rights.
Wohlatz’s fiction debut “El futuro perfecto” won Locarno’s Golden Leopard for the best first feature in 2016, and was invited to more than 70 international film festivals.
“Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which is described as “a quiet comedy of misunderstandings,” is set in a coastal city in Brazil. Kai arrives from Taiwan for a holiday with a broken heart. She meets Fu Ang, who could become a friend, but then disappears.
While looking for him, Kai discovers the story of Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers living in a skyscraper. Kai finds her own experience strangely mirrors that of Xiaoxin’s story. Over the course of a hot, slow summer, delicate bonds grow between them.
Wohlatz’s fiction debut “El futuro perfecto” won Locarno’s Golden Leopard for the best first feature in 2016, and was invited to more than 70 international film festivals.
“Sleep With Your Eyes Open,” which is described as “a quiet comedy of misunderstandings,” is set in a coastal city in Brazil. Kai arrives from Taiwan for a holiday with a broken heart. She meets Fu Ang, who could become a friend, but then disappears.
While looking for him, Kai discovers the story of Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers living in a skyscraper. Kai finds her own experience strangely mirrors that of Xiaoxin’s story. Over the course of a hot, slow summer, delicate bonds grow between them.
- 2/11/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
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