Golden Horse Awards for 2022 go to "Coo-Coo 043" and "Limbo"

by Nathaniel R

Sylvia Chang wins her fourth Golden Horse. img via Golden Horse instagram

Whoops this year's 59th Golden Horse Awards slipped right by us. They were held on November 19th in Taipei. The annual event covers the best in Chinese-language cinema and are juried awards. Director Ann Hui was Jury President this year and actor Chang Chen was also on the jury. The cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing (In the Mood for Love) took over the awards executive committee lead role from Ang Lee. Though the Hong Kong thriller Limbo had led the nominations with 14 and won the most awards, the big winner was a film called Coo-Coo 043. Nominees, photos, winners, and a few comments about the films are after the jump... 

BEST FEATURE

COO-COO 043

• ★ Coo-Coo 043 (Taiwan) -13 nominations / 2 wins + FIPRESCI prize
  A drama about a struggling family who competes in pigeon racing for a living.
  
  
• Gaga (Taiwan) - 7 nominations / 2 wins
  A family drama which kicks off with the granddaughter's return from abroad
  
  
• Incantation (Taiwan) - 14 nominations / 2 wins  AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX
  A horror film about a cursed woman trying to protect her daughter. 
  
  
• Limbo (Hong Kong) -14 nominations / 3 wins + Audience Award
  A black and white action thriller about a young police officer and his veteran partner investigating serial killings. It won the most awards of the night but lost this prize.
  
  
• The Sunny Side of the Street (Hong Kong) - 7 nominations / 3 wins
  A drama about a Pakistani refugee boy and a local taxi driver 

Sadly only one of the following films is available for US audiences at this juncture though it sometimes takes international titles without US distributors a year or two to make their way to streaming platforms (if they get there). For example two of last years Golden Horse nominees in various categories have recently started streaming in the US: The Falls (which was an Oscar submission) is now on Netflix and Moneyboys (a queer drama) is now on Amazon Prime. 

Last year's Best Actor champ, movie star Chang Chen, returned to hand out Best Actress

Sometimes at the Golden Horse Awards there is Oscar submission overlap but there's not much of it this year apart from Singapore's Oscar submission Ajooma which has a couple of nominations.  Since these films debuted before the end of November they also won't be eligible for Oscar submissions next year either from these Asian countries. One of last year's Golden Horse nominees, though, Goddamn Asura, is submitted to the Oscars this year to represent Taiwan. 

BEST DIRECTOR

image vis Golden Horse instagram

• Chan Ching-lin - Coo-Coo 043
• Chang Tso-chi - Flotsam & Jetsam
• ★ Laha Mebow - Gaga
• Kevin Ko - Incantation
• Cheang Pou-Soi - Limbo

Laha Mebow is the first female Taiwanese aboriginal film director.

BEST LEADING ACTRESS

A LIGHT NEVER GOES OUT

• Hong Huifang - Ajoomma
• Tsai Hsuan-yen - Incantation
• ★ Sylvia Chang - A Light Never Goes Out
• Cya Liu - Limbo
• Angela Yuen - The Narrow Road

A Light Never Goes Out is about a widow who takes up her husband's passion for making neon-signs. The acclaimed Sylvia Chang, who is 69, has been working in Chinese cinema since she was 18. She won her first Golden Horse way back in 1976 (Best Supporting Actress, Bi yun tian)  and has been a favourite ever since. She's been nominated in 7 different categories (Feature, Director, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress, Best Original Song), and won in two of them (Actress, Supporting Actress). This is her third Best Leading Actress win.  She also won for My Grandfather (1981) and Passion (1986... which she also wrote and directed) Her best known films in the US are surely The Red Violin  and Eat Drink Man Woman  but internationally she also received attention for 20 30 40  (2004) which she wrote, directed, and starred in and which was Taiwan's Oscar submission.

Ajoomma, one of the nominees here, is submitted to represent Singapore at the Oscars.

BEST LEADING ACTOR

• Yu An-shun - Coo-Coo 043
• Gordon Lam - Limbo
• Louis Cheung - The Narrow Road
• Joseph Cheng - The Post-Truth World
• ★ Anthony Wong - The Sunny Side of the Street

Wong is best known in the US for his roles in Hong Kong action films like Hard Boiled, Heroic Trio, Infernal Affairs (later remade into The Departed) and the American period film The Painted Veil.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

img via Golden Horse instagram

• Yang Li-yin - Coo-Coo 043
• Rimong Ihwar - Coo-Coo 043
• Jennifer Yu - Far Far Away
• ★  Kagaw Pilling - Gaga
• Caitlin Fang - The Post Truth World

Kagaw Pilling plays the grandmother in that family drama.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

BAD EDUCATION

• Jung Dong-hwan - Ajoomma
• ★  Berant Zhu - Bad Education
• Hu Jhih-ciang - Coo-Coo 043
• Kao Ying-hsuan - Incantation
• Mason Lee - Limbo

Berant Zhu is just 23. Bad Education is about three high school delinquents on the night before their graduation. 

Choreography winner Sheu Fang-yi and Best Supporting Actor nominee Mason Lee serving sexy for the camera

One of the nominees here, Mason Lee (see gif above), was born into cinema. His father is none other than the legendary two-time Oscar winner Ang Lee. You can see Mason Lee as an infant in his father's Oscar nominated film The Wedding Banquet (1994), then again as a child in his father's short Chosen (2001) for BMW (remember those films with Clive Owen as "the driver") and then grown up in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016). He's now 32 years old. Aside from his Chinese language movies he's had a bit part in the Scarlett Johansson movie Lucy, and played "Teddy" in The Hangover Part II. 

BEST NEW PERFORMER

img via wikipedia

• ★  Hu Jhih-ciang - Coo-Coo 043
• Huang sin-ting - Incantation
• Yukan Losing -Gaga
• Eric Chou - My Best Friend's Breakfast
• Sahai Zaman - The Sunny Side of the Street

Hu Jhih-ciang, who just turned 25 this month, has had a breakthrough year with one television series role, an award-winning performance in a short film, and two movie roles including this one which made him a Golden Horse winner.

BEST NEW DIRECTOR

• Tseng Ying-ting - Abandoned
• Shuming He Ajoomma
• Kai Ko - Bad Education
• Hong Heng-fai - Kissing the Ground You Walked On
• ★  Lau Kok-rui - The Sunny Side of the Street

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

• Ajoomma
• Coo-Coo 043
• Incantation
• Gaga
• ★  The Sunny Side of the Street

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

• ★  Limbo
• My Best Friend's Breakfast

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

LIMBO

• Incantation
• Kissing the Ground You Walked On
• ★  Limbo
• Salute
• The Sunny Side of the Street

Limbo is in black and white and no matter the country, that tends to be an awards magnet!

BEST ART DIRECTION

• Abandoned
• Coo-Coo 043
• Demi-God: The Legend Begins
• Incantation
• ★  Limbo

BEST MAKEUP AND COSTUME DESIGN

• Abandoned
• Coo-Coo 043
• ★  Demi-God the Legend Begins
• Incantation
• Limbo

How's this for unusual. A puppetry film won Best Costume Design! 

BEST ACTION CHOREOGRAPHY

image via imdb

• Abandoned
• Demi-God the Legend Begins
• Geylang
• Limbo
• ★  Salute

Interestingly the winner here is not an action drama but a docudrama about and starring the dancer Sheu Fang-yi who also choreographed. She was a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company in the late 1990s 

BEST FILM EDITING

• Bad Education
• Coo-Coo 043
• ★  Incantation
• A Holy Family
• Limbo

BEST SOUND EFFECTS

• Abandoned
• Coo-Coo 043
• ★  Incantation
• Kissing the Ground You Walked On
• Limbo

BEST ORIGINAL FILM SCORE

• Coo-Coo 043
• Incantation
• Limbo
• ★  The Narrow Road
• Salute

BEST ORIGINAL FILM SONG

• "Around the Hearth" - Gaga
• "La Vi Em" - And Miles To Go Before I Sleep
• ★  "What's On Your Mind" - My Best Friend's Breakfast
• "A Place of Eternity" - Untold Herstory

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

• Blue Island
• A Holy Family
• ★ And Miles to Go Before I Sleep
• King of Wuxia
• Silence in the Dust

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

img via Golden Horse instagram

• Between the Stars and Waves
• Black Wall
• Kaohsiung City, Yancheng District, Fubei Rd, No 31
• The Lighting
• ★  Will You Look At Me

Will You Look At Me won the Queer Palm - Short Film prize at Cannes this summer and received a special mention in the shorts competition at DOC NYC recently. It details a conversation between the filmmaker Shuli Huang and his mother when he returns home. A graduate of the Beijing Film Academy he became an MFA candidate at NYU in 2019. Will You Look at Me is his second short. He's also served as cinematographer on three feature films. 

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT

• Big Day
• ★  Can You Hear Me?
• Frontier
• To the Sea
• The Thing With Feathers

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

• ★  Compound Eyes of Tropical
• A Dog Under Bridge
• The Loach
• The Island of Us
• A Night with Moosina

The following prizes are decided in different ways or by different sets of voters

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD

• Coo-Coo 043
• Incantation
• Gaga
• ★  Limbo
• The Sunny Side of the Street

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

• Lai Cheng-ying
• Chang Chao-tang

OUTSTANDING TAIWANESE FILMMAKER OF THE YEAR

• Cheng Ming-ze

FIPRESCI PRIZE (for first or second feature)

• Coo-Coo 043

NETPAC AWARD (honoring new Asian talent)

• Autobiography

OBSERVATION MISSIONS FOR ASIAN CINEMA AWARD

• Autobiography
• Jeong-sun

Okay, until next year Golden Horse Awards!

Comments

[Hwa M]

American Girl, which won four Golden Horse awards last year, is also available on Netflix worldwide.

[Antoine D]

Bravo for Sylvia Chang. She is a fixture of Chinese-speaking cinema and has impressively continued to be a muse for auteurs (Bi Gan, Jia Zhangke, Tom Lin Shu-yu...) even at this stage of her career. Albeit overlooked internationally, she is also a very fine director - my favorites are Siao Yu (1995) and Love Education (2017).

[Claran912]

Trivia from an Asian reader of the blog:

There are 4 major categories that narrowly win by 1 vote (Total votes 15): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress & Best Supp Actress

Coo Coo-43 beats Limbo 8-7
Kagaw Pilling (Gaga) beats Cheang Pou-Soi (Limbo) 8-7
Sylvia Chang beats Cya Liu (Limbo) 8-7
Kagaw Pilling (in her screen debut at 75yo) beats Yang Li-Yin 8-7

So Limbo loses all three top prizes by 1 vote

According to the Jury spokesperson Wen Tian-Siang, Best Actor received all 15 votes on 1st ballot. Comparing the performances, he mentioned that the other nominee's performances are very rich and full, but Anthony Wong's is very natural and nuanced.

Same verdict for Best Actress. Sylvia Chang is able to convey so much w a simple glance and change of expression, her sublety wins the jury's heart over the more acclaimed and explosive performance of Cya Liu.

The jury was super impressed with Kagaw Pilling and they cannot believe its her screen debut.

Other narrow race include Best New Director, which Kai Ko (lead of Money Boy & Best Actor nominee last year) loses by a small margin.

[Claran912]

Trivia part 2:

With her nom this year, Sylvia Chang has set a new record of being nominated in every decade since 1970s! Yes, she has beaten Queen Meryl track record at the Oscars. lol

While Sylvia narrowly wins by 1 vote this year, she also narrowly loses by 1 vote in Best Actress 12 years ago due a controversy in the then jury's deliberation, where she was unfairly mud-slinged by one particular jury member tt costs her the prize then.

Talk abt Poetic Justice!