The Time to Live and the Time to Die

In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained.

Jin is in her 60s. Her husband gone, her concern is for daughter Zuer, in New York trying out IVF with her partner Michelle. When Jin receives news that Zuer and Michelle have died in an accident, she heads for NY. There, she has another shock: she has inherited Zuer’s embryo and it’s for her to decide its fate. Meanwhile, going to NY also forces Jin to face Emma, the daughter she gave up for adoption when she was 17.

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror," the Kuomintang government's anti-communist political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people from 1947-1987.

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

A coming-of-age story about a young brother and sister whom spend a pivotal summer in the country with their grandparents.

Two friends who haven't seen each other for thirteen years reunite. One is a successful concert pianist just back from a European tour and the other has just started a new business.

Lin Hsiao-yang tries to keep her family together while working as a waitress at Kentucky Fried Chicken and going to night school. With no mother and her father currently working out of town, it is up to Lin Hsiao-yang to take care of her younger siblings, who are slipping into a life of crime.

Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.

Composed of three separate stories, the film vividly portrays Taiwan during the cold war period when the country developed its economy with help from the United States.

In 2011, Vicky looks back on her life a decade earlier, recalling her turbulent relationship with her controlling boyfriend Hao Hao and her growing connection to a compassionate gangster amid the neon haze of Taipei's nightlife.

In this portrait of small-time hoods rendered in rhythm-of-life anecdotal detail, Gao is the leader of a circle of layabouts including his sidekick, Flathead, and their girlfriends, Pretzel and Ling. He is also the originator of petty crime schemes, which promise to get the gang nowhere fast.

An actress preparing to play in a historical epic is terrorized by someone faxing her pages from her stolen diary; has colorful flashbacks of her affair with a now-deceased man; and imagines black-and-white film-within-a-film scenes of the movie she is about to appear in.

A romance about a girl who falls in love and marries a music teacher. The couple struggle through life as the man does not want to accept money from his rich father.

Leading Taiwan cinema names Hou Hsiao-hsien (“The Assassin,” “The Puppetmaster”) and Lee Kang-sheng (“Days,” “Goodbye, Dragon Inn”) are attached to “Twisted Strings”, a TV anthology series backed by HBO Asia and streamer Catchplay.The seven-part series is written and directed by Golden Horse-nominated director, Huang Xi (“Missing Johnny”). Hou is attached as the series executive producer. Lee, who has appeared exclusively in films over the past 30 years, notably those of famed Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang, stars.

In three separate segments, set respectively in 1966, 1911, and 2005, three love stories unfold between three sets of characters, under three different periods of Taiwanese history and governance.