A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

The 1991 film A Brighter Summer Day, directed by Edward Yang, is considered by many one of the best movies ever made. The film is set in Taiwan, shortly after the Chinese Civil War, when the country was under martial law, with a political and cultural pressure felt at every level of society. At the center of this intricately plotted four-hour drama is the family of fourteen-year-old Xiao Si'r, whose strong sense of honor and justice is pulled in various directions as he gets caught up in a youth gang and romantically entangled with the girlfriend of a disappeared gang leader. But more than that, this incredibly textured four-hour drama gives the sense of a whole uneasy social fabric.

As this is the first Chinese-language film the Criteria hosts have covered, they are joined by film festival programmer Frank Yan, who provides crucial historical and cultural context about Taiwanese history and cinema.

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Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com