Taipei Story

Qingmei Zhuma

Hou Hsiao-hsien collaborated on the screenplay with and starred in Edward Yang’s second feature.

  • Director

    Edward Yang

  • With

    Tsai Chin, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wu Nien-jen

  • Taiwan 1985. 110min

  • Digital 4K (restoration)

  • Hokkien and Mandarin with English subtitles

Yang’s impressive sophomore feature stars filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien (also a co-writer) and pop/folk singer Tsai Chin as couple Ah-lung and Ah-chen, whose relationship is doomed by their contrasting worldviews; one ruminates on the past, while the other looks to a bright future. Capturing Taiwan’s capital at a moment of rapid modernisation, Taipei Story skilfully counters the intimacy of its central relationship with a wider overview of a society undergoing seismic change.

Taipei Story was restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at the Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique and Hou Hsiao-hsien.