Tsai Ming-liang

Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.

Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

In Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.

He wanders around the Comb of the Wind, where the sea rises and breaks against the shore. Along the way, he passes an old Basque farmhouse, a silent man, a woman drinking water, a woman smoking, punks gathered in a rock bar, and people in the ancient city at sunset. The Diamond Sutra speaks of all living beings in these words: "Specks of dust are not specks of dust; therefore, they are called specks of dust".

Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.

A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.

In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.

In the wee hours of winter a night train travels through a sleepless city. This is a panorama of a Buddhist monk’s journey through Tokyo at night. He also stops at a bath-house in a capsule hotel, where he makes a brief encounter.

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.

Ximending was once the trendiest area in Taipei, and it's also where Kang-sheng Lee's first film was shot. Twenty years ago, director Ming-liang Tsai asked Lee if he wanted to be in his film, and Lee's answer changed the course of his own life forever. Now Lee returns to where his career began to shoot a film about himself.

A sleeping city, streets without people. A figure in a red robe walks slowly — across a carpet of leaves, over cobblestones, along the cold pavement. Autumn night fog descends upon the city. In the cinema, people watch the monk’s slow steps and fall asleep. Can phantoms meet and understand each other? Night Journey was created in just ten days through a collaboration between Tsai Ming-liang and FAMU students — a tribute to cinema and to Jihlava as a place of silent dreaming.

In 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.

Tsai Ming-liang's new film, Back Home, depicts Anong Houngheuangsy and the daily life of his home village in Laos. We witness buildings in varying states of habitation and disrepair, farm animals, rice fields, religious sites, domestic scenes, a sun-dappled food market, and a dog adorably trying (and failing) to escape a carnival ride.

Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.

In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.

A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.

This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.

Xiao-Min, engaged before finishing high school, finds herself trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage, with her curiosity about the world unfulfilled. Her monotonous life as a housewife is disrupted by a young intruder, sparking change. Following her divorce, she faces loneliness and confusion about intimacy. What path will she choose now?

A collection of shorts by four East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.

At age 12, in the twilight of the Chinese Civil War, GAO Bing-han followed the Nationalist government in their exodus to Taiwan under his mother’s orders. Now, in his 80s and a lawyer, GAO encounters three mothers in his work. The first is HONG, who tolerates her son’s violence. The second is JIANG, an indigenous woman who isn’t accepted by her father-in-law. And the last one is XIE, who seems elegant on the surface but is greatly depressed due to her family problems. In the midst of dealing with the conflicts of these three, GAO can’t help but sigh: “Did the war really end?”