Department of Cultural Affairs

Featured Filmmaker: Pema Tseden

As the world grows ever more chaotic and life increasingly restless, how do we find strength of spirit to navigate this turbulence? 

The 2025 Taipei Literature Film Festival has the theme “The Poetics of the Soul” and explores the silent yet profound dialogue between literature and film, inviting audiences to reflect on the weight and belonging of the soul in uncertain times. 

This year’s festival pays tribute to two influential creators who recently passed away, Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden and American author Paul Auster. 

Though vastly different in cultural background and aesthetic style, both artists were deeply concerned with the way individuals found their place amid the cracks of fate, faith, history, society, and solitude. Through poetic storytelling, they sought a sense of inner peace.

This year’s spotlight is on Pema Tseden, a Tibetan filmmaker, novelist, and poet with a minimalist and restrained visual style, blending the spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism with the tensions of modern society. Pema pioneered a new cinematic language for minority cultures, giving Tibetan voices a resolute and independent space within the mainstream. His work expanded the horizons of Chinese-language cinema, bringing greater attention to multicultural narratives and peripheral experiences. Pema broke away from long-held stereotypes and representations of Tibet in Chinese cinema. His perspective, both internal and self-defined, infused contemporary Chinese film with cultural depth and philosophical contemplation, making him one of the most influential and representative figures in modern Chinese-language cinema.

The Silent Holy Stones

Pema’s films, such as The Silent Holy Stones, The Search, Tharlo, Balloon, and his posthumous work Snow Leopard, use long takes and sparse dialogue to portray the transformations and contradictions faced by Tibetans in the realms of culture, ethics, and faith. Rather than grand narratives, these films compel audiences to respond to the truths of life through the characters’ gaze, through their silence.

 Snow Leopard

In Tharlo, the moment when the protagonist’s long hair is shaved off feels like a rupture of the soul. Balloon spins a tale of feminine choice and pain through the loss of a single condom (the “balloon” of the title). Snow Leopard stages a dialogue between nature and humanity, wildness and order, set against the vastness of the Tibetan Plateau and pointing to a kind of ethical imagination beyond language. 

The festival will feature all eight of Pema Tseden’s feature films, offering audiences a deep dive into his cinematic world and philosophical reflections on life, nature, and humanity. 

Also highlighted is Paul Auster, one of the most experimental novelists in contemporary American literature. Known for his philosophical tone and sense of play, Auster masterfully constructs meta-narratives and paradoxes of fate. His relationship with cinema is equally distinctive, reflecting his keen observations on urban loneliness and fractured identity. This year’s selections include: Blue in the Face, The Inner Life of Martin Frost, In the Country of Last Things, offering a glimpse into the fragmented poetry of New York as seen through Auster’s literary lens. 

 In the Country of Last Things

Blue in the Face takes place in a tobacco shop, tracing small but touching connections between people. The Inner Life of Martin Frost uses a fragmented narrative to evoke the lingering shadows of love and memory, as if unfolding in an uncertain dream. Set in a post-apocalyptic city, In the Country of Last Things explores moral choices and existential dilemmas in extreme circumstances. The Red Notebook, adapted from Auster’s short story, is inspired by real-life events and delicately captures the role of coincidence and repetition in shaping destiny, continuing his exploration of the boundaries between reality and fiction.

In addition to works by these two masters, the festival presents a diverse array of films rich in literary depth and visual beauty, including: Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Thomas Mann: The Confidence Man and His Confessions, and Ophelia Did Not Drown. These films breathe new life into classic texts, transforming literature from words on a page into living reflections of modern emotions and shared experiences.

The outstanding Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a light-hearted romantic comedy, cleverly weaves in the intellectual/emotional duality of Austen’s novels, mirroring the tug-of-war women today face between love, career, and self-expectation. Beneath its breezy tone lies thoughtful insight, making it a perfect example of how literature and cinema resonate with the times. 

The Taipei Literature Film Festival has never just been about “watching movies”. It is a dual journey of reading and viewing. Whether gazing at the stillness of Tibetan landscapes through Pema Tseden’s lens or wandering the labyrinthine streets of New York City as imagined by Auster, each film is an inner journey, a passage of the soul. This spring, step into the cinema and allow the words and images to reconnect you with your own.

▍2025 Taipei Literature Film Festival

Date | May 23–June 5

Venue | SPOT-Taipei Film House, SPOT-Huashan Cinema