The 20 Best Taiwan Movies of All Time. You should check out these Taiwan Movies. These Taiwan Movies will give you a lot of fun and practice.
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1. Your Name Engraved Herein (2020)
Director: Kuang-Hui Liu
Amidst pressure from their families, homophobia, and greater social change, two male students named Chang Jia-han fell in love in Taiwan in 1987 when martial law is lifted. A-han and Birdy, two new students who are also musicians in the school band, quickly become the best of friends at an all-boys Catholic high school.
They engage in shenanigans while sharing long stares. Father Oliver, the school’s priest and band director, advises the kids to “profiter du moment,” which strengthens A-han’s friendship with Birdy. The two brothers travel to Taipei, purportedly to mourn the passing of President Chiang Ching-Kuo, but end up becoming closer because of their experiences there. Despite being interested in one another, they are nevertheless cautious to pursue their growing attraction.
Their interaction is complicated by the advent of co-educational education because the presence of female students permanently alters classroom dynamics. A-han refuses to let go of his love for Birdy even though she attracts the attention of a female classmate who provides the possibility of a socially acceptable heterosexual romance.
2. The Sadness (2021)
Director: Rob Jabbaz
A young couple trying to get back together amid a metropolis overrun by a sickness that transforms its victims into insane, bloodthirsty sadists. A disgruntled nation eventually drops its guard after a year of fighting a pandemic with largely benign symptoms.
At this point, the virus mutates on its own, creating a pandemic that affects the mind. The infected are compelled to commit the most heinous and horrifying acts they can imagine, which causes the streets to explode in violence and depravity.
Torture, rape, mutilation, and murder are just the beginning. As they attempt to reunite amidst the pandemonium, a young couple is tested to the breaking point of sanity. The era of decorum and law has passed.
3. A Sun (2019)
Director: Chung Mong-hong
A Sun follows a four-person, dysfunctional household. The father of A-Ho, the younger son, has put all of his hopes and expectations on his reserved eldest son, A-Hao because A-Ho has always been a difficult child.
A-Ho is facing juvenile detention for a crime he committed with his best buddy, though not fully of his own free will, while A-Hao is striving to get into medical school. A-Wen deserts A-Ho, declining to assist, and even pleading with the judge to hand down the harshest punishment possible for his son.
To make matters worse, A-Ho’s lover soon appears in the doorway of his mother Qin not long after he is given a prison sentence. Even though A-Ho is imprisoned and unaware of her pregnancy, the adolescent girl is pregnant and determined to bear his child.
4. A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1985)
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
The semi-autobiographical movie is about the childhood and adolescence of director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, who was growing up in Taiwan and experiencing the deaths of his grandmother, mother, and father. This portrayal of youth and childhood is greatly influenced by the filmmaker’s boyhood.
Hou’s family left the mainland for Taiwan in 1948, like many of his countrymen, and was never allowed to come back. The growing generation gap in a family estranged from its cultural history is the main subject of the movie.
5. The Terrorizers (1986)
Director: Edward Yang
Over several weeks, the lives of three couples in Taipei are continuously intertwined in a metaphysical enigma. A young woman and the tough Native Taiwanese petty criminal gang she hangs out with are the focus of the movie. A Mainlander doctor and his novelist wife are also central characters. A young photographer who observes the city’s life as it unfolds around him is a nod to the protagonist of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.
6. The Falls (2021)
Director: Chung Mong-hong
A woman and her teenage daughter are quarantined in their flat during the Covid-19 outbreak, and their relationship suffers as a result. Since then, a mother has been hearing waterfall sounds. Chung Mong-hong, a Taiwanese filmmaker who is one of the most vexingly undervalued storytellers of our day, gained a modest audience with his ferociously long, three-hour family tale “A Sun,” which was nominated for an Oscar in 2020. The talented director steps back from the novelistic breadth of his previous film with the parent-child drama “The Falls,” which is set during a pandemic, to examine the development of a broken link that is reconciled.
7. Monga (2010)
Director: Doze Niu
After the military regime was overthrown in Taiwan in the 1980s, Monga focuses on the turbulent lives of five boys coming of age at the same time. Mosquito, the story’s narrator, receives an invitation to join the group as a result of a pointless argument over a chicken leg.
Since Mosquito was raised without a father and never had any true friends, he finds an irresistible world of brotherhood and companionship once Monk, Dragon, and the others take him under their wing. Mosquito quickly discovers, though, that not everything is as it seems in this brutal world.
The delicate balance of the district’s territory is challenged, friendships are put to the test, and allegiance is called into doubt when a party of mainlanders tries to take over Monga.
8. The Boys from Fengkuei (1983)
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Ah-Ching and his mates spend most of their time drinking and fighting now that school has ended on their island fishing community. Three of them decide to look for jobs in the port city of Kaohsiung. They locate a home through family, and Ah-Ching develops feelings for the girlfriend of a neighbor. They had to deal with the harsh reality of the enormous city there.
Ah-ching, whose father was disabled as a result of a brain injury, played around in their island fishing town of Fengkuei with his buddies Ah-rong, Kuo-zai, and Ah-yu. They ran across some local thugs one day, and Ah-ching hit one of them in the head with a brick. For Ah-ching, the cops were searching. To conceal, they traveled to Kuo-zai’s uncle’s house near the water in Neipo, where they had fun until they were taken to the police station for the crime of injury.
After being bailed out by his brother, Ah-ching no longer desired to remain in Fengkuei. He stole some money from his house and joined Ah-rong and Kuo-zai in the port city of Kaohsiung to hunt for employment.
9. Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996)
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Gao takes the train to Pinghsi where he and his pal Hsi will set up a 10-day gambling den. He goes with Flatty, his devotee, and Pretzel, Flatty’s girlfriend who works occasionally at a nightclub.
The same nightclub where Pretzel works also employs Gao’s girlfriend Ying, who doesn’t trust the people around Gao and believes they are dangerous. Ying does not want Gao to quit, despite the investment contract he has already signed with Hsi for a nightclub in Shanghai.
She prefers that he remain in Taiwan and start a restaurant there. They approach tragedy due to a series of schemes designed to make quick money. The video shows how the underworld and the political elite have formed an unsavory relationship.
10. Yi Yi (2000)
Director: Edward Yang
The lives of the Jians—husband and wife N.J. and Min-Min, adolescent daughter Ting-Ting, and eight-year-old son Yang-Yang—as well as, to a lesser extent, those of their larger network of extended family and friends, are described. These lives are buttressed between two milestone events in their sphere.
The Jians reside in a posh Taipei apartment block with Min-Min’s mother, who is in a coma. Min-Min’s family members alternate shifts by her bedside, relaying the news to her regardless of whether she can hear it. The other three use Min-Min as an informal sounding board for their problems, mostly about figuring out their place in the present and their contribution to her predicament, while she struggles with this ongoing process.
Yang-Yang still has a childlike view of the world, which is why he enjoys shooting pictures of people’s backs or heads. Yang-Yang’s naivete is also the reason he is the victim of bullying, particularly from a group of older females and from one of his professors. In the difficult friendship between her closest friend and next-door neighbor Lili and her lover Fatty, Ting-Ting is serving as an unofficial middleman.
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11. Blue Gate Crossing (2002)
Director: Yee Chih-yen
Meng Kerou and Lin Yuezhen were classmates. They got along well with one another and discussed everything. One day, Yuezhen revealed to Kerou that she liked Zhang Shihao, the star swimmer for the team, and requested Kerou’s assistance in telling him about her emotions.
Shihao was misled into thinking that Yuezhen was the one who was bashful and that Kerou was the one who was expressing her feelings for him on behalf of her friend when Kerou finally gave in to Yuezhen’s pleading and went to tell Shihao about her friend’s love.
Shihao began to pursue Kerou after being quite drawn to her, but Kerou always shied away from him. Shihao was genuinely perplexed, but in the end, Kerou revealed a secret to him, and their relationship went beyond friendship.
12. Detention (2019)
Director: John Hsu
Fang Ray Shin, a female student at the hillside Greenwood High School, meets teacher Mr. Chang for counseling in 1962 Taiwan during the White Terror martial law era, and the two progressively fall in love.
Mr. Chang, together with fellow educator Miss Yin and male student Wei Chong Ting, surreptitiously arranged a study group for prohibited books during this dangerous time when free speech was curtailed and sensitive books were outlawed.
The height of Taiwan’s white terror era is represented by a fictional tragedy. A broken-hearted female high school student who accidentally exposed a secret book club that was strictly forbidden by the authorities, leading to the execution or torture of several teachers and classmates, is now looking for redemption by confronting her past and assisting the final remaining member of the book club in escaping from an unending nightmare.
13. Au revoir Taipei (2010)
Director: Arvin Chen
A young man named Kai is hopelessly in love and wants to leave Taipei to see his lover in Paris. Susie, a female who works there, starts to show interest in Kai as he spends many late nights there studying French. After one out of the usual night, Kai discovers Taipei already has the thrills and romance he was looking for.
14. Formula 17 (2004)
Director: Chen Yin-jung
A gay youngster who moved to the city in search of a summer job falls in love with an architect. “Formula 17” swoons with youthful naivety, preferring romance to sex. Tien-Tsai, a naive country kid who moves to Taipei, is prevented from losing his virginity because he insists on finding true love first.
The title of the movie, which is “17-Year-Old’s World” in Chinese, perfectly captures its target audience. Unlike all the other gay men he knows, Tien is a virgin who is saving himself for love. Tien is a gay man yearning for love. On his first night in the city, he encounters Bai, the top gay playboy.
who appears more focused on sex than on love. Bai thinks that because all of his relationships have ended poorly, he is destined to never discover true love. And as a result, he starts to exclusively have one-night stands. They start to run into one other more frequently though, on the street and at the gym where Tien works. And they begin to fall in love gradually.
They have sex one night, which makes Bai’s emotions worse and causes Tien to doubt love in all its forms when a friend of Bai’s claims that Bai remarked, “He hopes you don’t misunderstand,” the next morning after going to his buddy’s house.
15. Goddamned Asura (2021)
Director: Lou Yi-an
Goddamned Asura, loosely based on actual events, examines a mass shooting through the lives of individuals who are most directly impacted by it. The ambitious ensemble drama by Lou Yi-an is intricately organized and challenging, yet it gradually transforms into a somber depiction of isolation, unhappiness, poverty, and the fact that all decisions have an effect.
Wang Yu-xuan received Best Supporting Actress at the 2021 Golden Horse Awards, and selection as Taiwan’s Oscar nominee could boost the film’s international popularity. The movie is split into three chapters after that. In the first, the gunman Jan Wen, who turned 18 on the day of the incident, discusses his discontent. He must study overseas, said his father, if he wants to reset his life.
When all he wants is to be noticed, his mother thinks she can purchase his devotion. His anguish is depicted in the graphic web novel “Raging Zero” that he and his obedient closest buddy Xu Axing, who has feelings for him, developed together. Jan Wen’s daily visits to a dog named Oreo who is kept caged up reflect his sentiments of claustrophobia as well.
16. Daughter of the Nile (1987)
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
The eldest child of a dysfunctional family struggles to care for her younger siblings who are turning to crime while also working to keep the family together. While attending night school and working as a waitress at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lin Hsiao-yang attempts to maintain her family’s unity.
She no longer has her mother or older brother. Her father travels for work. It is up to Lin Hsiao-yang to look after her young sister, who has already started stealing, and her gang member and criminal brother.
17. Taipei Story (1985)
Director: Edward Yang
Lung, a former player for the United States Little League team who now runs a traditional fabric shop, can’t help but yearn for his former success. He meets a former teammate who is now a struggling cab driver one day. The two share memories of earlier times while feeling a sense of loss.
Lung resides with Ah-chin, a Westernized professional who was raised in a traditional home and was his childhood sweetheart. Even though they share a home, Ah-chin is constantly wary about Lung’s history of relationships with other women. Following a disagreement, Ah-chin turns to her sister’s friends, a gang of Westernized, hedonistic young people, for comfort.
18. A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
Director: Edward Yang
Junior high student Zhang Zhen is made to attend night school in 1959 Taipei after failing a test. His father, a career government employee, is outraged by this since he is aware of the frequent delinquency among night school students and is concerned about it.
The following morning, Si’r and his father tune in to a radio program featuring outstanding students. In 1960, Si’r and his best buddy Cat observe an actress getting dressed while a drama is being filmed in a studio. They take his torch after being apprehended by a guard and run back to school.
When Si’r hears movement in a pitch-black classroom, he flicks on the torch, startling a couple who are in love but failing to see their faces. We meet the Little Park Boys and their rival gang, the 217s. Si’r is not a part of either gang, but he hangs out with the Little Park Boys more frequently.
The Little Park Boys are commanded by Honey, who killed one of the 217s for his fiancée, Ming, and is now hiding from the authorities in Tainan. In his absence, Sly is the gang’s leader. After Si’r puts Sly into trouble by mistaking him and his girlfriend Jade for the lovers he saw, Sly and Si’r grow apart. In the meantime, Si’r and Ming randomly cross paths and become friends.
19. Dear Ex (2018)
Director: Hsu Chih-yen, Mag Hsu
When a teenage kid and his mother learn that his father’s life insurance policy will be given to his mistress, they become even more estranged. When Sanlian’s ex-husband passes away, she learns that he changed the terms of his insurance policy, leaving a stranger called Jay in place of their son.
Sanlian is outraged and goes to face Jay with her son, but Jay defeats her plan. She is compelled to reconsider her connection with both of them when her son inadvertently moves in with Jay.
20. Island of Fire (1990)
Director: Kevin Chu
Someone at a corrupt warden-run prison fakes inmates’ deaths so they can subsequently be used as disposable assassins. To acquire proof of the corruption, a police officer is dispatched to the prison. To find those responsible for the killing of his teacher, Inspector Wei Wang travels deep undercover within a jail.
Poor Wei is terrorized by every jail stereotype imaginable within the huge house and learns that the root of the problem lies deep within the criminal justice system. Will Inspector Wei be able to figure out who is behind the shadow government, survive the horrors of prison, and maintain his sanity?
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