E63 • More With Less Through Technique and Resilience • SHIH-CHING TSOU, dir. of ‘Left-Handed Girl‘ - Taiwan’s '25 Oscar Submission, Now on Netflix

Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou traces her path from a strict upbringing in Taipei to directing Left-Handed Girl, Taiwan’s 2025 Oscar submission for Best International Film, and now streaming on Netflix. After years working alongside Sean Baker, the four-time Academy Award winner known for Anora, Tangerine, and The Florida Project, and her creative partner since they co-directed their first feature Take Out, Shih-Ching steps forward with her solo directorial debut.

Shih-Ching and Baker wrote the script for Left-Handed Girl in 2010, but financing challenges kept the project on hold for more than a decade. Principal photography finally began in July 2022, a delay she now views as part of the film’s natural evolution. The story draws from her experience growing up left-handed in a culture with rigid expectations for girls, and its emotional specificity has already connected with audiences around the world.

Shot on an iPhone 13 with Beastgrip anamorphic lenses, the film captures Taipei’s night markets with stripped-down realism influenced by Dogme 95 and Lee Chang-dong’s Oasis. Shih-Ching worked with a small mobile crew, created the soundscape herself, and shaped the edit with Baker, whose instinct for editing performances she considers unmatched.

After premiering at Cannes Critics’ Week, Left-Handed Girl traveled the global festival circuit before Netflix acquired most territories, followed by theatrical releases in Taiwan, New York, and Los Angeles. 

Now representing Taiwan internationally, Shih-Ching reflects on stepping into visibility after decades behind the scenes. Her advice to filmmakers: trust your voice, avoid trends, build community, and keep going. Some films take time, and recognition often arrives later.

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Acclaimed documentary ROADS OF FIRE is now available on Amazon, iTunes, and Fandango at home. Directed by Nathaniel Lezra, the film won best documentary at the 2025 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film examines the migrant crisis here in the States all the way down to Venezuela, and Academy Award nominee Diane Lane calls it "a must-see journey of human dignity." Roads of Fire - now on Amazon, iTunes, Fandango.

Introducing the Past Present Feature Film Festival, a new showcase celebrating cinematic storytelling across time. From bold proof of concept shorts to stand out new films lighting up the circuit, to overlooked features that deserve another look. 

Sponsored by the Past Present Feature podcast and Leica Camera. Submit now at filmfreeway.com/PastPresentFeature

Chapters

• 0:33 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 0:52 SHIH-CHING TSOU, dir. of ‘Left-Handed Girl‘ - Taiwan’s 2025 Oscar Submission, Now on Netflix

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:21)
Thanks to Sean Baker, I had the privilege of sitting down with Shi Ching-Sou at the Duville Film Festival this And she spoke about her path from a strict upbringing in Taipei to directing Left-Handed Taiwan's 2025 Oscar submission for Best International Film, and now streaming on Netflix.

watch it now, it's fantastic. After years working alongside Sean Baker, the four time Academy Award winner known for Enora, Tangerine and the Florida Project, and her creative partners since they co-directed their first feature Takeout together, which just opened our first ever past present feature film festival by the way, thank you. Shi Qing steps forward with her solo directorial debut.

Xi Qing and Baker wrote the script for Left-Handed Girl in 2010, but financing challenges kept the project on hold for more than a Principal photography finally began in July 2022, a delay she now views as part of the film's natural evolution.

The story draws from her experiences growing up left-handed in a culture with rigid expectations for girls, and its emotional specificity has already connected with audiences around the world.

Shot on an iPhone 13 with B-script anamorphic lenses, the film captures Taipei's night markets with stripped-down realism influenced by Dogma 95 and Li Chengdong's Oasis. Shi Qing worked with a small mobile crew, created the soundscape herself, and shaped the edit with Baker, whose instinct for editing performances she considers unmatched.

Shi Ching reflects on stepping into visibility after decades behind the scenes. Her advice to filmmakers, trust your voice, avoid trends, build community, and keep going. Some films take time, and recognition often arrives later.

Speaker 1 (01:55)
both of y'all getting to where y'all got now, but where y'all started, gives all of us hope. As far as anybody with a camera, there's no Just work on your technique, watch What is the reasoning for y'all's success, you think, as far as if you had to pick one kind of kernel? What was it?

Speaker 2 (02:13)
I think it's the resilience, but you know you have a good story. First of all, think the story is the most important thing you have to have. If you don't have a good story, no matter how expensive your camera is, no matter how good your DP is, it doesn't really work. You need a story. That's the center of the film. So that's the first thing.

Speaker 1 (02:36)
What makes a good story? Terrible question.

Speaker 2 (02:39)
It's a good story that you have to connect to people. have to find your audience and you have to connect with people's emotion. People have to be able to resonate with it. So it has to be a universal thing. Whatever you think is family, your subject is family, right? Love story or anything is like human emotion. ⁓

Speaker 1 (03:03)
And it helps to know what you're talking about, I guess, right? Like to tie it into something you care about or have experienced.

Speaker 2 (03:10)
Yeah,

exactly. Like, left-handed girl, you know, it's all about family, about daughter and mother and also about left-handed. know, in left-handed I'm left-handed. I'm left-handed boy. It's such a big, big thing, you know, because after the screening, there are so many people came to me and then tell me all about their left-handed story. Really? Yes. So I connect... This just left-handed thing that Connect with...

Speaker 1 (03:21)
By the way,

I didn't know anything about this.

Speaker 2 (03:39)
so many people. It's amazing. Like I didn't even expect.

Speaker 1 (03:43)
This is cool, and I don't know about that. that, that's a Taiwanese culture thing?

Speaker 2 (03:47)
I think it's throughout the different culture. Not just Taiwanese, but Germany, Japan, India, Israel. It's also very religious, like Christians. left, right. This is right very universal thing throughout different countries.

Speaker 1 (04:02)
Yeah, right, yeah, wrong.

So you wrote years ago?

Speaker 2 (04:11)
2010, the first draft of...

Speaker 1 (04:13)
okay.

And before you had a daughter? Yes. Your daughter's... My kids, I have a six-year-old next week. But like, what do you think made you want to have a mother-daughter... It's a mother-daughter story, it? Yeah. Then, before you had a daughter, what provoked you?

Speaker 2 (04:17)
Nine? She's nine right now.

think this whole film is about my observation about Taiwan. How I grew up in Taiwan and how the Taiwanese culture affects everybody's life. Especially as a girl, as a woman, there are so many limitations. There are so many expectations on girls. So you grow up in this very kind of suffocated environment. I'm talking about my experience. And I'm much older than...

like the story with the woman in the story. So I grew up in the environment is that you cannot ask any question. You just have to follow ⁓ the and you are not allowed to express any emotions. So it's really, it's kind of, it's kind of suffocating and it's also like a traumatizing for a lot of women.

Speaker 1 (05:21)
until you left Taipei?

Speaker 2 (05:23)
I graduated from college in to New York for my master's degree.

Speaker 1 (05:29)
Yeah. what was it like coming to New York then, like from Taipei?

Speaker 2 (05:28)
I met Sean in the school.

Well, it's definitely like a big change around the environment, also the vibe, and also ⁓ how people live their life. Here in the it's all about individuality. You are allowed to do by whatever you want to do. It's encouraged. Where I grew up, nothing is allowed.

Speaker 1 (06:00)
feel like stories are different too, eastern stories, western stories, right? Like western is more Greek, like hero's journey individual. It seems in eastern, I don't know, it's more about not that. I can't speak on that, what would you say? More about kind of universal themes and kind of...

Speaker 2 (06:14)
It's

like more about, I think in Eastern there are lot of family stories, a lot of love stories in Taiwan, some genre stories. I think this type of really looking deep inside, I don't see that much. Interesting. It's a little bit, a lot of time people will shy away from it because they feel like this is very, like you're talking about.

You're talking about the male favoritism, you know, it feels like people sometimes don't want to talk about it. So comfortable. Yeah. But it happens in almost every other family. Yeah. I was talking with my actor's parents, ⁓ Nina, the little girl's parents in a taxi back. they are much younger than me. So I asked them about male favoritism. I said, so do they still exist in your generation? And they said, yeah.

It's very legit, it's still there. People just don't really discuss it because it's something you can't really change.

Speaker 1 (07:21)
always wanted to go to Taiwan. I'm curious about it. What's the wonderful side of

Speaker 2 (07:25)
Taipei is a 24-hour city. Yeah. Yeah, it's really, really vibrant. You can go out on the street like 3 a.m. or 5 a.m. The convenience stores are at every other block. Okay. So it's very, very safe. Oh, for bit. Yeah. Yeah, so it's even more 24 hours than New York City.

Speaker 1 (07:49)
Why do you love movies? Why do love movies? It's a pretty broad question, but

Speaker 2 (07:55)
For me, film is not just for entertaining. For me, film is almost like seeing, it's a chance to see another, somebody's life in different country, different culture. I think it's like a lens ⁓ of the world for me, especially the type of film we are making. It's about giving the people who couldn't speak up for themselves. You hear their voice. For example, when we make Tangerine.

That was the intention, we want to give those people, the community a voice. the Florida project, we want to give those, you know, this family who live in the poverty voice, and also in Life Any Girl, I want to give those women voice.

Speaker 1 (08:42)
It's such a big deal. And it's so great that you guys have gotten the spotlight and put it on these people. It's a big deal.

I never forget seeing the Enora billboard right above the donut shop from Tangerine. not even about like the billboards. It's fun, but it's about just the, you guys being able to just keep it real and keep it consistent and keep it about the thing that it was always about for

makes you want to stand up and applaud. And when Sean got those four, I mean let's just say the little Oscars, when he got the four, it was just perfect.

It's like, it's all about just like, what, what do you have? What are you trying to say? And fighting. Like you said, resilience, I guess. Yeah. And then also like American audiences, like don't watch dog win 95 really. And maybe film students do and film lovers might, they don't watch, you know, a lot of European cinema. I like a lot of great filmmakers, a lot of European cinema is to be credited at least.

inspired from right? I like Dogma 95, what's your favorite Dogma 95 film? What's your go-to film?

Speaker 2 (09:48)
I really love the celebration.

Speaker 1 (09:51)
Which filmmaker did that?

Speaker 2 (09:53)
still remember the man, but I remember you as a psycho.

Speaker 1 (09:56)
I too much into Dom 95 because I know what it is, I know who they are, and I respect it. I love the idea, but when I sit down to watch it, I'm like...

Speaker 2 (10:05)
You didn't connect with it. No, but when we watched it, it just came out. So at the time, that was like a big, you know, independent ⁓ film kind of movement. Yeah. So that's why we like really, really, we really enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (10:18)
Yeah, we were.

Speaker 2 (10:20)
watch

yeah, near 90s to like 2000.

Speaker 1 (10:23)
okay, so take out. You guys made that film and you got, what was the big kind of like success that y'all had when it came out? Where did it premiere?

Speaker 2 (10:33)
We premier at Slamdance.

then we won Nashville.

Speaker 1 (10:36)
Nashville. Nashville's a good festival.

Speaker 2 (10:39)
Yeah, that's so long ago. remember we went to a couple. We also went to Hawaii Film Festival. was great. And our film actually, most of Sean's film went there. So I went there a couple times. I think I went there with Red Rocket.

Speaker 1 (10:46)
That was a lie.

yeah, Red Rockets. What's your favorite festival?

Speaker 2 (11:01)
Hmm. It's such a beautiful, know, beautiful film festival. It's tiny, but they really treat you like you're a can. It's like 1,500 people see theater. Also, Lacano. Lacano in... Lacano. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:19)
The

big giant Plaza Grande. Have you screened it outside? ⁓

Speaker 2 (11:25)
I

know we screen there but we went there we started and that was the first time we went. Damn. That was beautiful. The whole town is the festival. Yeah. And we, I remember the team went there together so we all like back around the lake.

Speaker 1 (11:40)
I've done a bunch of interviews actually last year with La Carta. It seems so magical and like it's so cool to do for me to at least just do these do the full calendar year of all the festivals. Oh you do everywhere? Well I'm just talking to them virtually like a filmmaker a couple of filmmakers from each festival. I'm getting a taste of like the personality of each festival. Like Carlo Vivari seems very Eastern European cinephile-y which is a wonderful kind of cool thing.

And then Locarno seems like somewhere, they seem like they have their own thing going on. I don't know, like it's very, very classy, also seems very independent. But also there's like, a little bit of a taste of commercial. I feel like some of the films that I've interviewed. What about Sundance? How's Sundance been for y'all?

Speaker 2 (12:26)
⁓ Some days I think I went with Tangerine. We put it here at the next ⁓ section. It was really nice. It's like biggest in the US. I'm just not crazy about the winter there. It is so tough.

Speaker 1 (12:42)
yeah.

It seems like the film market too in general if you can go to a festival that also can help sell your movie, right? That's a real thing that doesn't exist at all of them. Sundance has it, guess. Tiff has it. Obviously can. ⁓ Netflix took Left-Handed Girl.

Speaker 2 (12:59)
Yeah, they took most of the territories. But we also sold some territories with La Patte, so we have some like, you know, separate ones. We get the theatrical release.

we're very, very thankful. We have really good international sales that packed. Netflix, you know, it's a machine. They are so big, it's a big studio. And the way they kind of handle the project is ⁓ super professional. Netflix was...

put it in the theater on November 14th, so in New York and LA. And then online will be November 28th.

Speaker 1 (13:35)
28th, And then for international, for places all...

Speaker 2 (13:39)
Yeah, we have different and in Taiwan is October 31st. ⁓

Speaker 1 (13:43)
Wow.

Got you. All What is like the biggest, like darkest moment you've had as a filmmaker? Oh my god. Just pick one. I'm sure there's many. Darkest. And then the tag along question would be what was so good that you learned from it, you know, the silver lining of that dark cloud.

Speaker 2 (14:01)
I would have to say, you know, Laugh Honey Girl because it took so long to make. know, even like when we finished shooting, ⁓ we waited for Sean to finish his film.

I think the biggest lesson I learned from this film is everything has its timing. Every film has its own fate. When you create it and where it will go and when it's going to finish, you can't really force it. You just have to do your best and hope for the best. when you are ready, when the opportunities come, then you can catch it.

Speaker 1 (14:39)
And like being a filmmaker, we've all been there where like you have a film and you think it's great and it's gonna be your big thing or whatever you think and then it might not do too much. What would you tell a filmmaker that's discouraged in this moment? I mean you already kind of just did but again to reiterate like because a lot of people give up. A lot of people give up. A lot of people make one movie and not two or two and not three. And resilience I do think also is the key, consistency, and just keep going. Yeah. But I guess the question would be like

I don't know, where can you find solace as a filmmaker or comfort as a filmmaker when you don't hit big, you know, with your film?

Speaker 2 (15:15)
You

know, think like for example Sean is a very good example, right? He started, we started Takeout and then he went on to a Prince of Broadway You know each film just kind of feel you kind of build out your portfolio that way, right? You just do whatever you love you tell the stories you want to tell and do not listen to anybody tell you Like do not chase in the trend you have to just have your own idea like something you really love

like it really resonated with you, I'm pretty sure it's going to resonate with other people as well.

Speaker 1 (15:48)
And then so all of y'all's past films are Criterion Collection now, right? Which it's a retrospective situation, but they weren't always. But slowly, They found their home ⁓ in that way. ⁓ It seems like, somewhat recently, which is great, right? So even if like a takeout, I mean, you had Slamdance, so that's a great thing. But I mean, even if it wasn't as big as it might be right now, you never know what could happen later, even with a past film.

Speaker 2 (15:53)
Yes.

Exactly, you just have to keep on working, you know, maybe your first film didn't sell But once you have the third film fourth film fifth film when a sixth film hit You know people are going to go back to see everything you did before because they feel like maybe I missed something You know, maybe it was really good, but just because you didn't have a name before so nobody noticed you Yeah, but once you have one thing hit Then people are going to stop picking out everything you did before and then start you so all your film are going to be watched

eventually. So you just have to keep on going, keep on building your portfolio.

Speaker 1 (16:51)
How do know when a movie is completed? How do know when you can move on?

Are you like a Virgo OCD like me where it's like, I've got to make sure everything's perfect, da da da. But then also I find a place where I can say, I'm ready to let go. That's my answer.

Speaker 2 (17:06)
I think for La Penet girl, I think it's just a time. I have been even editing on my own for like two years before Sean ⁓ came back. So all the time I was just kind of looking at everything. I know that nothing would be perfect because you always see something you want to make changes.

Speaker 1 (17:27)
That's a nice thing to say that to, right? It frees you up. ⁓ okay. There's no perfection.

Speaker 2 (17:29)
Never

Yeah,

so you just have to you just have to you know understand and then You know, fortunately they are deadlines, right? Every film has a deadline. So you want to make the candid lie then you will have to hand in your film at certain

but you just have to work to the last minute and then make the deadline and let go.

Speaker 1 (17:53)
Yeah, okay. That's a good thing with these festival

Speaker 2 (17:56)
I remember after you submitted you still have time to sure

Speaker 1 (18:00)
Yeah, and it helps to have people that know the folks at the festival, right? You know, they've already made the phone call Eugene or whoever runs Sunday. don't know. Yeah, but it's just like, okay, cool. We're looking forward to seeing I'm like, that's great. So you were prepping while Sean was filming an aura. Is that roughly it or how did that work?

Speaker 2 (18:18)
I

finish shooting before he...

Speaker 1 (18:20)
Oh, that's right, because you were editing during the film. I don't know what his timeline was for shooting that movie.

Speaker 2 (18:26)
No, he actually shot February. I remember he started shooting like maybe January or February of 2024? Oh. No, 23. Damn. Yeah, because I finished shooting in Taiwan like August 2022. OK. I finished. And then I came back to New York and then I flew to LA to meet up with him to kind of set out the editing project with him in September.

Speaker 1 (18:55)
Got you. And and Shone edited this together, technically?

Speaker 2 (18:58)
Yeah, I kind of like, I kind of like, you know, explained everything, like show him all the footage. And then he started editing. And I came back to New, I went back to New York, you know, but we always like talk, you he was asking me like, where do you find this? Where do you find that? So, you know, he just added, he's just editing away. And I remember he added for like, until like first scene to the 35th scene, and then he had to go to work on his project.

So I kind of just like, we hired another editor to finish the whole sample. And then I took it back to myself. just kind of added a film on my own, also looking for the music because there are so many music, so many different.

Speaker 1 (19:40)
I mean, ish. It's fine, don't worry. ⁓

Speaker 2 (19:45)
Maybe,

I would say 30, 20, 30, or maybe even more. because we have, know, in night market, like every store has a different sound. So I'm trying to like mimic that, make sure it sounds authentic. So I put in a lot of Taiwanese music, a lot of like, ambulance music, you know, as well. So.

Speaker 1 (20:07)
How did you source that music? Like local people or did you just found music supervisor?

Speaker 2 (20:12)
Well, I have music supervisor, ⁓ one is in the so he is helping me to deal with any music I got from here. But in Taiwan, I'm ⁓ the music supervisor myself. I have a good friend who works in a record company for long time.

Speaker 1 (20:30)
Can

you enjoy it? You have to to do that job. I have to.

Speaker 2 (20:33)
⁓ Especially when I work on all Sean's films, I always work on multiple things. ⁓ Although I only have producer credit sometimes.

Speaker 1 (20:43)
I mean

it seems that way. You've been homies. You guys have been there together the whole way. Before you came tonight I'm like, let me just do a little brush up and just like looking at your IMDB pictures and it's like take out. His editing style and your editing style. what is his editing style like and what is yours? Because I see the finished results but...

Speaker 2 (20:46)
I do like it.

Speaker 1 (21:08)
How does the process look?

Speaker 2 (21:10)
Well,

he's, I would say, you know, he is a master, you know, like he just won an Oscar for editing. he is really good at, you know, the pacing, you know, he has a very instinct.

Speaker 1 (21:16)
Yeah, that's my favorite part about that.

Timing

is crazy. He never cuts too soon. He feels very on a dime.

Speaker 2 (21:28)
Right, and he edited all his films on his own. So he knows exactly what to do. He also watched tons of movies. So I think I can really compare my style with his style. Mine is more like very instinct. I don't really, I just try to tell the story really clearly. But he would go in there, he cut really quick, trying to mix everything together.

Speaker 1 (21:55)
just to see every option.

Speaker 2 (21:56)
Yeah,

so he is really good at also picking the take. Like when I first saw his cut, sometimes I would be surprised, like where did he find his take? I was watching the footage for like two years. I didn't even see that take he picked. Because he doesn't understand Mandarin, he doesn't understand language, but he picked the best performance. He always can pick out the best performance.

Speaker 1 (22:20)
Do you think him watching so many movies really helps a lot? Yeah. Of course.

Speaker 2 (22:24)
That's

part of the movie education.

Speaker 1 (22:28)
And some people watch a lot of movies and some people watch a lot of movies. yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:32)
Yeah,

I think he can like watch, I think he probably watched like one movie or that. Yeah. You he loves like buying blue-ray DVDs.

Speaker 1 (22:40)
I've that, yeah. I've talked to some filmmaker where her and her partner make, every time they eat a meal, they watch a movie. It's like at least a lunchtime movie and a dinnertime movie. I'm like, wow, that's crazy. Production of Left-Handed Girl, what did you shoot on?

Speaker 2 (22:56)
We actually shut up

Speaker 1 (22:58)
the way it looks. Okay cool. Yeah. I thought so. Yeah. it looks wonderful. Thank you. Because we're to the point now where it's like I hate to ask that question would you shoot on but like it is iPhone is wonderful because you can put the camera in so many places you can't put a bigger camera. Exactly. And it's just people don't really respect it as much as a big film camera so you can get away with more.

Speaker 2 (23:12)
rise.

Speaker 1 (23:18)
So I can bring an iPhone into El Coyote and shoot a scene in there. You know what I mean? If I want to. also the aesthetic, it has such a dreamy, least from the trailer, it seems like it has such a dreamy, bloom, I don't know, aesthetic about it. Like did you guys, I'm sure you had like little filters on the camera. Like what did the setup look like? Why the iPhone?

Speaker 2 (23:44)
Well, you know, because I want to shoot in the real night market. that, you can't really bring like a big camera because everybody will stop like Right? So you can't really do that. So that was the main reason we chose iPhone because we had to hire a camera. We had to hire a crew. So, you know, the first day of shooting in night market, we we only have like 20 people crew. You know, I try to make the crew really small so we can have more shooting days.

And on top of that, know shooting on the real locations, you can't really have a huge crew because it won't work. It moves a lot. Yeah. the first day we had 20 people. They set up the noodle stand and they stayed close to the street. And we can't shoot because everybody saw the crew. They knew we were shooting. So the first day we couldn't use the... We cannot use any footage we shot. So the second day I told everybody, like, if you have nothing going on,

and said you have to just leave or you have to dress up.

Speaker 1 (24:45)
shooting on the iPhone, iPhone 15, 16.

Speaker 2 (24:48)
I think it's 13. Really? Yeah, I think I shot with this phone actually. I'm using it right now. Yeah, this is the phone.

Speaker 1 (24:56)
Wait, really?

You film left-handed girl on this phone?

Speaker 2 (25:00)
Yes. But we use the anamorphic lens. And we use the, it's called feast grip. Little handle thingy. Yeah, it's very robotic. It's really good. And also the anamorphic lens is also from their company.

case and the case has that little slide you can just put it in.

Speaker 1 (25:22)
Nice. at nighttime, were you struggling? Well, it's probably lit up in Taipei,

Speaker 2 (25:26)
Yeah, we didn't really

do a lot of lighting, actual lighting, because Night Market itself, by itself, is bright, with all the lights of the world.

Speaker 1 (25:34)
Also the stabilization on the damn iPhone, that's crazy. How? It's so small, whatever proprietary thing they have, I know Sony wishes they had that. You know what mean? It's just insane. Anyways, not to be too technical. Let me ask you this, what is your favorite movie of all time? Of all time? That's a terrible question.

Speaker 2 (25:53)
I would say

Oasis. It's a love story between these two young people and it's of forbidden

I think they just had a 4K restoration.

Speaker 1 (26:08)
So why this movie though? Why do love

Speaker 2 (26:10)
It's it's so beautiful. And then also the subject matter, you know, it's like they, he actually focused on this love is like forbidden, like people like kind of turn away from. So I think it's so, and then so beautiful in this film, it's almost like an imagination.

This girl will. This girl is disabled. But in the imagination, you see her become a normal girl. they have, they like play. And there's an elephant. When they were in the room, you see the butterfly and all.

Speaker 1 (26:48)
It's beautiful.

I always try leave people with something new. And I have a list of things to watch, because I'm not as educated as I'd like to think I am sometimes.

that movie or did some other movie effect Left-Handed Girl in any kind of way? Like any sort of bigger big inspiration

Speaker 2 (27:03)
would say dark and light, find a film. love how pure it is. You strip down all the technical, you focus on the story. And you don't use music to affect the audience's emotions. They use existing lines, you don't add in any music. So I think that's just a pure form of movie. It's just the story. That's the most important part.

Speaker 1 (27:29)
I feel like I'm always trying to resist putting in music until the very last minute because if you're leaning on it, then it ain't working, right? Right. That's a good ⁓ idea.

Speaker 2 (27:39)
That should add something. If it didn't add anything, you shouldn't have it.

Speaker 1 (27:43)
Yeah. What is your, what's next for you after this movie, after Lieutenant Girl?

Speaker 2 (27:48)
Well right now I don't even have time to think about anything, you know, but we just focus on the right now We are all focused on the Oscar campaign. We're focused on a lot of know film festival a lot of PR We just want to you know, you don't get you don't get get here so often So I just want to take this chance and see how far we can go

Speaker 1 (28:10)
Yeah, so you're the Taiwanese official selection for the Academy Awards. And then Netflix is, I'm sure, getting geared up. You guys are all getting geared up to do the campaign. Yes. Because the Enora campaign was incredible. Yeah. Was that neon? Yeah. Yeah. Damn. So good.

Speaker 2 (28:27)
Yeah, and Netflix really, you know, they've been very supportive. Nice. And they handle all the US festivals for us.

Vicky is awarding Catherine and Vicky. There are so many people, this thing is so big.

Speaker 1 (28:43)
This is your moment or your first big moment as far as you know. Everybody knows her now, probably, right? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (28:50)
But

unfortunately in this film industry people just only focus on director. That's just the way it is.

Speaker 1 (28:59)
It's a

very ageist industry too, as far as the film. It's like if it's new and it's hot, then they love it. If it's not, they don't care, it seems like, except for the cinephile crowd, like the business side. How do you feel about the business side of show

Speaker 2 (29:15)
Well, it's I think that's just a game you have to kind of play you know like The the higher you get the more political it is So it's not sometimes it's not about how good your film is Sometimes it's about who you know who's on your team You know, but I think I just not just movie industry. I think that's every industry. Yeah, when you get to the top it's all about It's all about the connection

Speaker 1 (29:32)
Yeah.

When you're in it, how does it, do you feel like you're being swept away sometimes or do you just feel like it's more by the numbers and more manageable than you might have thought? mean, a lot of people don't get to a place where you are, so what is it like currently?

Speaker 2 (30:00)
working in the industry for 25 years, I never really step up and then become the voice of the film. I always work with Sean and then I just kind of stay behind and I don't need to say anything and he's going to deal with everything else. So now I just have to really step up. I have to talk to people and tell people what this film is about. I have to advocate for my own work.

I feel like right now really feel like I'm a real artist. I finished this work, it took 20-25 years to put everything together. I think it's all worth it because of where we are. The most important thing is I feel so proud this film got selected by Taiwan. And I want to bring this film to the global stage to show people what Taiwan

I want people to see Taiwan. want people to hopefully watch the film. want to come to Taiwan to see Night Market. They want to see what Night Market is like.

Speaker 1 (31:09)
Is that some of your culture possibly upbringing that made you feel like you needed stay in the background?

Speaker 2 (31:16)
Being a

woman in Taiwan, a lot of times you are not allowed to say too much. When I was growing up in Taiwan, we were told not to ask any questions. You're not allowed to ask questions in class. And you are not allowed to express your feelings. You are not allowed to say anything. You just have to follow the rules and follow the authority.

So for me to, so that, I feel natural, I just feel natural. Yeah, I do everything I have to do, just finish everything I have to finish, but then I just stay quiet because that's just how I grew up.

Speaker 1 (31:53)
Last question, if you could tell your younger filmmaking self anything right now, what would

today.

Speaker 2 (32:00)
I would say definitely go out and talk to people, make friends, form a community because you do need it because film is all about teamwork, it's all about networking. I think the more connected you are, the faster, the easier you'll get ahead.

Speaker 1 (32:21)
Yeah, it's for real. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for showing for setting this up. He's a sweetheart.

Speaker 2 (32:27)
Sometimes. ⁓

Speaker 1 (32:29)
first

folks. I

Speaker 2 (32:32)
Thank you.