The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (TGHFF, November 6-22) is set to kick off with Malaysian director Edmund Yeo’s The Age Of Goodbyes and close with Taiwanese director Wang I-fan’s The Scar-Faced Cat: Way Of Asura.
The Age Of Goodbyes will make its Asian premiere at the festival, following its world premiere at Toronto this week. The Taiwan-Malaysia co-production is adapted from Malaysian Chinese author Li Zishu’s award-winning 2010 novel.
The drama follows a lonely boy who discovers a book that details the tragic love of a woman and her schoolteacher boyfriend in the 1960s.
Director Yeo and cast members Vivian Sung, Stanley Yau from Hong Kong boy band Mirror, Troy Liu, Renzo Liu and Phoebe Lin will attend the festival’s opening night on November 6. Producers are David Tang from Taiwan’s Renaissance Films and Dennis Lai from Malaysia’s Happy Together Pictures.
Based between Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, Yeo was named best director at Tokyo in 2017 for his second feature We, The Dead (Aqérat). His directing credits also include 2020 Japan-Malaysia co-production Malu and 2021 Japanese drama Moonlight Shadow. He is also known for his long-standing collaboration with fellow Malaysian director Woo Ming Jin, who serves as producer, writer and editor on his projects.
TGHFF closing film The Scar-Faced Cat: Way Of Asura is a fantasy martial arts thriller set during the early years of colonial Japanese rule in Taiwan. When disputes over gold-mining interests flare, a skilled martial arts police officer is assigned to investigate a series of murders, with all evidence pointing to a mysterious assassin known as Scar-faced Cat.
The cast is headed by rising Taiwanese star Han Ning (Girlfriends) who underwent a full year of physical training for her first leading role on the big screen and award-winning Japanese actor Sota Fukushi whose credits include My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday and Netflix series Can This Love Be Translated?. Both stars share numerous fight scenes in the film.
It is set to receive its world premiere in Busan’s Midnight Passion section. Director Wang’s 2020 feature debut Get The Hell Out screened in the Midnight Madness section of Toronto and won best action choreography at the Golden Horse Awards.
TGHFF will also premiere the first two episodes of two high-profile Taiwanese drama series. Our Blues is a local remake of the Korean series of the same name, with veteran Angie Chai as executive producer and Vic Chou and Chang Ning in the cast, while Miracles Of The ER is an upcoming Netflix medical series produced by the Tears On Fire team and starring Wallace Huo, Cheryl Yang and Kent Tsai.
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