Q&A with Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui April 13 & 14

With their feature debut, filmmaking duo Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hu have composed a lyrical family vignette of quiet transcendence, poised on the cusp between past and future, city and countryside, life and death. Aging married couple Khim-Hok (Jason King) and Siu-Tuan (Yang Kuei-Mei) share a modest home perched high in the wooded hills outside Taipei, where they bicker, gripe, and commiserate, inhabiting the familiar rhythms of a well-trod daily routine—until a sudden death throws their world into a state of muted disarray and brings the abrupt return of their estranged son. Luminous Super 16mm photography and an intricately textured soundscape cast a mesmerizing, melancholic spell, giving way to a delicate, understated meditation on the before-and-after of loss, and the intractably lingering traces of love.

Travel support provided by Taipei Cultural Center in New York, Ministry of Culture, ROC (Taiwan). Special thanks to director Hui-chun Chang.