‘I Heard That They Are Not Going To See Each Other Anymore’ review: Offbeat, idiosyncratic Taipei-set debut defies easy categorisation

Ka Ki Wong. Taiwan/Hong Kong/Turkey/UK. 2026. 86mins

Lives are intertwined in the streets of Taipei in this uninhibited and wildly original picture which deals with pain, guilt, loneliness and romantic disappointment in the most joyous and playful way imaginable. The freewheeling feature debut from Hong Kong-born, London-based filmmaker Ka Ki Wong defies easy categorisation, although its premiere in CPH:DOX’s Next Wave Competition suggests elements of non-fiction filmmaking in its looping, meta, formal experiment. But Wong is all about blurring boundaries – between fiction and non-fiction; between story strands and the film crew capturing them; between memory and imagination.

Infuriating, beguiling picture is entirely authentic in its weirdness 

The story revolves around several characters: Melih (Melih Selçuk), a melancholy Turkish immigrant, runs a bustling noodle stall and longs for a connection with the permanently drunk Yu-Ping (Yu-Ping Wang); Tao (Elizabeth Tang Tao), enamoured of the half-baked and indifferent Shin (Shin Cheung Yuk-Hin), attempts to make an impression on him by causing him pain. It’s a heady, confounding piece of filmmaking which doesn’t always hang together – in particular, Wong seems reluctant to give the story a definitive ending. 

There’s something of a maverick Godardian spirit to the film, and a vivid, febrile quality that evokes the early work of Wong Kar-wai. At times, when characters wearing tea-pot helmets or mirror-ball heads weave through everyday life on the streets of Taipei, it feels like some kind of bizarre Situationist intervention. At others, the film feels bracingly contemporary – a skittish Zoomer experiment which nurses a fascination with communication technology artefacts from past generations, like camcorders and rotary dial phones.  While it won’t be for everyone, this quirky but soulful picture should resonate at further film festivals with audiences open to fresh voices and boundary-pushing work; North American and Latin American premieres have been confirmed, but not yet officially announced.

The non-fiction element comes, in part, from the fact that the picture is unscripted. Wong works instead from a spreadsheet which contains minimal prompts for each set-up: a location, character names, a list of props. These props can include the aforementioned tea-pot helmet; the watering can from which Yu-Ping drinks her booze; a red tropical flower (a Pincushion Protea) which becomes a recurring motif and frame for the camera at one point; a large mirror that Tao has to manoeuvre around Taipei, including on the back of a moped (health and safety be damned). Wong interviews her characters; they respond (in Cantonese, Mandarin, Turkish and English) in words which may be created for the fictional roles, or may come directly from the actors’ own experiences. Blurred boundaries, yet again

Wong has chosen her collaborators astutely. Given a degree of creative latitude that might have panicked another cinematographer, DOP Tang Ka Hei shoots with an agile, responsive lens which is open to the unexpected. At the same time, he frames the picture with real elegance – with its rich, vibrant colour palette, the film is, in its way, as striking a portrait of Taiwan as Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mambo.

The sound design, by Huang Tsai-en, favours the organic sounds of a forest and adds texture to the film, as does the symbiotic score by Peter Czibolya. And the cast are game, embracing the improvisational freedom and running with it. Particularly impressive are Selçuk, who delivers a bruised monologue in Turkish from a derelict pod house in the Wanli UFO village, and the enjoyably minxy Tang, who is a delirious agent of chaos in novelty knitwear.

Eccentricity in filmmaking can sometimes feel a little laboured and try-hard. Not so with this infuriating, beguiling picture, which is entirely authentic in its weirdness and honest in its idiosyncrasy.