Synapses

Taiwanese drama film.

Two years post heart transplant, Ah Xun remains unable to shake off the gloom cast over his renewed life. First, there is a house fire; then, an unprecedented pandemic breaks out. Retreating to his grandfather’s home, Ah Xun finds himself persistently haunted by a string of unfortunate events. He is faced with an ex lover’s return, an encounter with the mixed-race sibling neighbours, the harrowing news of his mother’s cancer, his sister’s nervous breakdown, a friend’s drug issues, and now, the news of his grandfather testing positive for the new disease.

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 17-year-old university student returns home during her summer holidays to the port city of Keelung of on the outskirts of Taipei. She falls in love with a young man, but his association with a local gang sees him caught up in a turf war. A wistful portrayal of the fragile, brief-lived attraction between these two youths, and pleasant times spent with loving families.

The story concerns a male youth named Ah Chung (or Diong-ah in the Taiwanese dialect) who graduates from high school and descends into a maelstrom of personal, familial, and communal conflicts. Ah Chung is going through the liminal stage of finding his place and aim in life. He is sent by his mother to a boot camp, training as one of the Eight Generals. This is a job in performing as a god in Taiwanese popular rituals and Ah Chung's mother believes it can bring spiritual and social goodwill to the much-troubled family: Financially strained mother who is a performer of "low-brow" entertainment, a kid brother who is somewhat retarded, a half-sister who is raped by his alcoholic father, and Ah Chung's listlessness which is easily sucked in by the local gang rivalry...

Although their characters and temperaments couldn't be less alike, 19-year olds Wei and Jie are best friends. They're also neighbours, living with widower fathers and problem siblings in the suburbs of Taipei. When Wei is promoted from the rank of nightclub parking valet to the rank of debt-collector in Brother Gu's gang, he persuades his boss to hire Jie to work alongside him. Things begin to go wrong when they are given a handgun to reward their success in the new job. Always excitable and volatile, Jie becomes reckless and dangerous when he has the gun in his hand. When they try to collect a debt from the boss of a rival gang, a fight erupts and Jie shoots the gang-boss. The boys find themselves on the run. But fate and their youthful dreams still have tricks to play.

Laichun, her father and two mothers, uncle and grandfather are of different generations; thus they all think differently. Father is the family head, and because he believes he must continue on the family name ends up taking two wives.

Bao stays with his grandfather for the summer and is shocked to see there are no modern appliances.

Director Tso-chi Chang made this film with his fellow inmates in prison. It tells the stories of eight prisoners, whose sentences together add up to more than a hundred years. What kind of incidents will touch their hearts and help them find direction in life?

Che (Tseng Yi-che) returns to Nanfang’ao fishing port after taking the rap for younger bro Ren’s (Cheng Yu-jen) stabbing of the son of local mobster Shun (Hsu Ling-tsang). Ren is also back from hiding in Japan with their father, Chang (Michio Hayashida), who is due to return to settle a score with Shun.

In a crumbling house on the edge of Taipei, two brothers drift through odd jobs, messy love, and quiet yearning for a life that feels like their own.

10+10 is a project initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to demonstrate the solidarity between Taiwanese film-makers. 20 directors are invited to make a 5-minute short film each on the theme of the “Uniqueness of Taiwan,” but allowed total freedom in all other aspects.

A father can have many different kinds of faces. Which one does your father have? This is a film of ten short stories, and each shows a different relationship between a father and his son. Each story reveals the complexity between fathers and sons.

Since his wife Mei-yun was left comatose after nearly drowning, CHEN You-ming has been raising his three sons alone in their seaside village. And since the mechanical digger he drives broke down, Chen has had more time on his hands than he likes. His life is suddenly disrupted by the appearance of a disturbed young woman who calls herself XIE Hui-zhen (“Zhen” for short) and says that Chen is her father. To uncover the facts behind Zhen’s wild claim, CHEN has to contact his old girlfriend KE Li-jia, last seen twenty years ago. Before the truth about Zhen’s inner turmoil emerges, CHEN has to deal with the death of his wife in hospital and the stresses in his relationships with his sons Wei, Ting and Liang.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Luo’s elder brother has been staying with him, who finds the arrangement increasingly irritating. When Luo’s brother unknowingly ruins his carefully prepared dinner for a date, long-held grudges come to the surface and the brothers enter into a big fight. Despite Luo’s good intentions, it looks like the dinner date is going to fail, and as his brother intervenes to save the day, the two talk again. The nuanced short is highlighted by a remarkable performance and a story that flows effortlessly with affecting emotions.

Miao hadn’t been living with her father; she kept good care of his car. One night with a sudden rain, her father came to visit and had dinner with her. After waking up the next morning, Miao realized it had been only a dream out of her longing for her father.