Movies by Tsai Ming-liang

The Wayward Cloud

The Wayward Cloud

Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

On a dark and rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.

Journey to the West

Journey to the West

In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.

The Skywalk Is Gone

The Skywalk Is Gone

A young woman wandering around meets a young man going to a casting call for a pornographic film.

Welcome to São Paulo

Welcome to São Paulo

All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.

The Moon and the Tree

The Moon and the Tree

Follows the lives of two big stars in Taiwan. Since a failed spine surgery 40 years ago, Lee Pei-jing, known as the “Moon singer”, has been confined to a wheelchair. Actor Chang Feng is reaching one hundred years old. Tsai describes Chang as a tree, which looks ever more beautiful as it grows old.

Where

Where

The ninth opus of his Walker Films series, which was shot at Centre Pompidou.

Stray Dogs

Stray Dogs

An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.

Abiding Nowhere

Abiding Nowhere

The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.

Letters from the South

Letters from the South

Six filmmakers present six short films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration.

Wandering

Wandering

This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.

Days

Days

Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.

My New Friends

My New Friends

Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar ...