Department of Cultural Affairs

Vivian Hsu (徐若瑄) Leads Exciting Doubles Match to Kick Off Festival

Korean Master of Romance Jin-Ho Hur and Legendary Hungarian Director Béla Tarr Open New International Perspectives

Main visual for the Taipei Film Festival, featuring a dancing metal butterfly which symbolizes the resilience and uniqueness of each film 

Taipei Film Festival, the not-to-be-missed summer event for film enthusiasts, will be held from June 21 to July 6 at Taipei Zhongshan Hall, Vieshow Cinema, and SPOT Huashan Cinema. In its 26th year, the festival will open with Doubles Match, the latest exciting film starring Vivian Hsu and Jen-Shuo Cheng (鄭人碩), which is sure to surprise and delight fans.

Festival ambassador Austin Lin has revealed that his first film festival was the Taipei Film Festival. Fifteen years ago, his first film, Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, was nominated for the Taipei Film Awards. Lin was invited to post-screening talks, saw himself on the big screen and received encouragement and support from the audience, which settled him in his path as an actor. As this year’s festival ambassador, Lin revealed that he will be using his festival pass to watch a wide range of films from all over the world to broaden his horizons.

Doubles Match was directed by Po-Hao Hung (洪伯豪). Hung’s previous film, Dad’s Suit, won Best Feature at the Taipei Film Awards, with lead actors Tsang-Hsi Ou (小戽斗) and Phoebe Huang (黃嘉千) winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. This year, Hung brings a completely different style with a film about two young table tennis players, played by Yu-Kai Peng (彭裕愷) and Hsing-Wei Li (李星緯), who form a strong bond and strive to become top international players. The film boasts a strong cast, including box office star Vivian Hsu from Little Big Women, Jen-shuo Cheng, who won Best Supporting Actor at the Taipei Film Festival for Gatao 2—The New Leader Rising, and talented actors Ming-Shuai Shih (施名帥) and Mandy Wei (魏蔓), offering fans a blend of visual appeal, passion, and inspiration.

The Taipei Film Festival is known for three main features: the City in Focus, the International New Directors Competition, and the Taipei Film Awards. This year’s City in Focus is Budapest, Hungary, which showcases a selection of 20 films including classics, films on contemporary issues, and engaging stories, a cultural feast for film enthusiasts.

As Hungary’s political, cultural, and economic center, Budapest boasts a rich history and cultural heritage and its films reflect a unique artistic style and profound depth. This year’s selections include recent hits like Semmelweis, which became the highest-grossing Hungarian film of the past five years; Explanation for Everything, which won the Orizzonti Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival; Pelikan Blue, a story of forged train tickets set against the backdrop of the Iron Curtain; and Christmas Carol, a film about a female teacher whose career is jeopardized by a parent’s complaint over a film she unintentionally recommends in class.

Legendary Hungarian director Béla Tarr is this year’s featured filmmaker. After completing The Turin Horse, which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2011, Béla Tarr announced his retirement from directing, stating that he felt he had said everything he wanted to say in film.

This year’s Taipei Film Festival will screen The Turin Horse along with Tarr’s earlier works, including Family Nest, which won top prize at the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, and a digitally restored version of his second feature, The Outsider. These films which provide a contrast between the beginning and end of the legendary director’s career have been unavailable on the big screen in Taiwan for 20 years.

Another featured filmmaker this year is the Korean master of romance Jin-Ho Hur (許秦豪). Hur is known for his skillful portrayal of complex, interconnected emotional exchanges that capture the ebb and flow of his characters’ lives through the subtleties of daily life and the changing seasons. This year’s festival will screen his debut and a representative work of the Korean New Wave, Christmas in August, with three other films from different periods of Hur’s career: One Fine Spring Day, starring Young-Ae Lee (李英愛), which won Best Film at the Blue Dragon Film Awards; April Snow, which helped Ye-Jin Son (孫藝真) win Best Actress at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival; and the historical LGBTQ epic Forbidden Dream starring Suk-Kyu Han (韓石圭) and Min-Sik Choi (崔岷植). Hur will attend post-screening discussions and deliver a masterclass during the festival. 

This year, the Taipei Film Festival’s Outstanding Contribution Award will be presented to hand-painted movie poster artist Chen-Fa Yen (顏振發). Yen has more than half a century’s experience and has created thousands of movie posters. He is currently the chief artist at Cyuanmei Cinema (全美戲院) in Tainan. With the support and advice of Cyuanmei Cinema, Chen-Fa Yen has started offering hand-painted poster classes, generously passing on his skills to interested individuals in the hope of preserving this art form. Having dedicated his entire life to film, on hearing he had received the Taipei Film Festival’s Outstanding Contribution Award, Yen expressed his gratitude, saying, “I will keep painting until I can no longer see.”