Taiwan Film Festival in Scotland 2025: Encounter Taiwan and the World
A selection of contemporary Taiwanese cinema that delves into the intricate tapestry of identity, memory, and societal transformation. This festival serves as a luminous platform of encounter, where Taiwan's cinematic imagination dialogues with Scotland's cultural landscape, and where local stories refract global questions of belonging, resilience, and renewal, to bridge Taiwan and Scotland, fostering a lasting cultural exchange that celebrates cinema's power to connect inward truths with outward visions, creating a shared space for reflection and inspiration. We invite you to join us in these marvellous encounters - where Taiwan meets the world, and where Scotland, in turn, encounters Taiwan.
Date: Tuesday 04 November 2025 - Wednesday 19 November 2025
Time: 18:00
Venue: Centre of Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT)
Category: Films and theatre, Social events, Student events
Taiwan Film Festival in Scotland 2025, themed “Encounter Taiwan and the World,” presents a selection of contemporary Taiwanese cinema that delves into the intricate tapestry of identity, memory, and societal transformation, demonstrating cinema as a living archive of Taiwan’s evolving self-understanding. This festival serves as a luminous platform of encounter, where Taiwan’s cinematic imagination dialogues with Scotland’s cultural landscape, and where local stories refract global questions of belonging, resilience, and renewal. This curation celebrates Taiwanese filmmakers’ dual vision: an introspective gaze into the island’s cultural and historical depths, paired with an outward reach that connects local narratives to global discourses.
In total, we present 13 screenings (18 titles) in Glasgow, the most vibrant city in Scotland, with the expectation of touring them across the country in the future. The program is organised into three thematic units: Intimate Familial Bonds, Historical and Trans-cultural Legacies, and Voices Transcend the Boundaries. These categories, defined by their narrative locus - personal relationships, collective histories, and peripheral existences - create a cohesive arc that progresses from intimate domestic spheres to national reckonings and societal edges, illuminating filmmakers’ ability to oscillate between inward reflection and global engagement. Besides, we also introduce a special section of short films, showcasing dynamic, bold energies from the young filmmakers. By weaving personal stories with universal themes, these films transcend geographic confines, inviting Scottish audiences to reflect on shared experiences of heritage, resilience, and social change. This progression mirrors Taiwan’s cinematic consciousness: an ever-widening circle of empathy and imagination.
Intimate Familial Bonds delves into the emotional intricacies of kinship and personal legacy. As the opening film, Family Matters (Pan Ke-yin, 2025) portrays a family’s quiet struggles, evoking domestic rituals that resonate universally. Yen and Ai-lee (Tom Shu-Yu Lin, 2024) probes intergenerational trauma through a tale of patricide and deception in Meinong, its raw emotionality bridging Taiwan’s rural heartlands with global narratives of familial rupture and domestic violence. Unexpected Courage (Shawn Yu, 2025) explores unconventional family dynamics via a May-December romance, its fireworks imagery symbolising fleeting yet explosive bonds. These films anchor Taiwan’s introspective storytelling while connecting to universal themes of love and loss.
Historical and Trans-cultural Legacies excavates Taiwan’s collective memory, linking local histories to global resonances. Island of the Winds (Ya-Ting Hsu, 2025) documents the struggles of Losheng Sanatorium’s leprosy patients. Established in the Japanese colonial period, the patients’ lives imprint an universally institutional neglect. Road’s End in Taiwan (Maria Nicollier, 2025) follows three half-brothers on a road trip, connecting the emotions from Swiss to Taiwan while also resonating with local heritage. Sleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz, 2024) explores a turn to globally diasporic experiences, where Taiwan parallels with Brazil, reflecting a contemporary rootlessness. Diamond Marine World (Hsiu Yi Huang, 2022) tells a Taiwanese businessman’s dream of shrimp farming in Burma with the tense interaction with Burmese workers’ lives, its documentary lens forging connections with global labor narratives. These works root Taiwan in a worldly dialogue.
Voices Transcend the Boundaries opens a dialogue between Taiwan’s own margins and global discourses on migration, gender, and precarity, foregrounding underrepresented voices. Salli (Lien Chien-Hung, 2023) traces a woman’s search for love via dating apps. An exotic imagination of “romantic capital”, Paris, becomes a backdrop linking personal isolation to woman autonomy. Welcome to Taipei Main Station Hall (Tseng Wen-chen, 2025) portrays Indonesian migrant workers, primarily female caretakers, whose stories are akin to Scotland’s post-industrial migrations. Mongrel (Chiang Wei-Liang & Yin You-Qiao, 2024) examines a caregiver’s life alongside stray dogs, its karaoke scenes echoing marginalised resilience. Days Before the Millennium (Chang Teng-Yuan, 2021) depicts two Vietnamese women in Taiwan from the 1980s to 2010s, igniting transformative recognition of the new immigrants. Ça Fait Si Longtemps (It’s been a long time, Laha Mebow, 2018) weaves Pacific island connections to Taiwanese Indigenous musicians. The guitar becomes a common language for two Austronesian tribes, resonating with universal quests for belonging.
The Taiwan Shorts program, encompassing Inspired by Lip Balm, Temple of Devilbuster, River Kidsssss, The Island of Us, Termite Feeding Show, and The Chronicles of a Garden, amplifies experimental voices and alternative aesthetics. These young creators explore the convergence of myth, materiality, and modernity through daring new vocabularies. From queer desire and indigenous animism to Buddhist exorcisms and termite metaphors, these shorts blend local specificity with global avant-garde sensibilities and genre hybridities, showcasing Taiwan’s cinematic innovation and creativity.
This festival aims to bridge Taiwan and Scotland, fostering a lasting cultural exchange that celebrates cinema’s power to connect inward truths with outward visions, creating a shared space for reflection and inspiration. We invite you to join us in these marvellous encounters - where Taiwan meets the world, and where Scotland, in turn, encounters Taiwan.
Director Junwei Lu (呂俊葳), PhD candidate in Film Studies at University of Glasgow