girl
DIRECTOR: shu qi
124 MINS, CHINA, taiwan, 2025, SUBTITLED
Winner Best Director, Busan International Film Festival 2025
Official Selection, Main competition, Venice International Film Festival 2025
Taiwanese star Shu Qi, known for her work in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films (The Assassin; Millennium Mambo) makes her directorial debut with this stark, deeply personal coming-of-age drama.
Set in 1980s Taipei, teenager Hsiao-lee navigates a poisoned home life, enduring her alcoholic father’s rages alongside her exhausted mother and younger sister. When she befriends classmate Li Lili, also from a troubled home, a new life opens up for her. Through captivating, potent performances, DP Yu Jing-Pin’s luminous cinematography, long static takes, delicate details and poetic impressions–ambient sounds, close-ups of fleeting visions like a red balloon escaping a school bag–Shu Qi creates an immersive and tenderly poignant portrait of pained adolescence.
NOTES BY MARIE-PIERRE RICHARD
