Oscar hopeful "The Falls" wins at the Golden Horse Awards

by Nathaniel R

Alyssia Chia and Gingle Wang arrive for "The Falls" -- will we also see them at the Oscars?

Chung Mong-hong's mother/daughter drama The Falls, which revolves around COVID-19 and mental illness, and is Taiwan's submission to the Oscars this year took home the top prize at the 58th annual Golden Horse Awards. But it was no sweeper. Chung Mong-hong, who had previously dominated the Golden Horse Awards just two seasons ago with A Sun (which went on to make Oscar's international finalist list), lost best director. Overall the wealth was spread with all of the Best Film nominees taking home statues. Chang Chen's latest star vehicle The Soul (streaming on Netflix) picked up four of them, tying The Falls haul. 

The complete list of winners and gifs and photos from the event are after the jump...

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Review: Taiwan’s Oscar Submission "A Sun"

By: Patrick Gratton

They say that time is the eternal healer. It picks you up from your bootstraps and licks your wounds. Time is also the eternal grim reaper. It has the power to darken one’s heart, hope and inhibitions.  Chung Mong-Hong’s A Sun, the big winner at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and Taiwan's submission for the 93rd Oscars, is a 150+ minute meditational piece on the effects of time and its role in expanding and tightening the human spirit. 

For a film with such a daunting running time, A Sun begins with a bang! Teenager A-Ho (Wu Chien-to) races with fellow gang member on his motorcycle through the pouring rain to a local restaurant. A-Ho thinks this is a simple shakedown to intimidating a rival of theirs. But the gang amputates the rival's hand with a machete (in the film's goriest moment). A-Ho’s father A-Wan (Chien Yi-wen) advocates for a guilty sentence during his son’s trial. When questioned by his wife about why he’s so apathetic towards their son, A-Wan replies that he’s simply giving him a chance to repent while spending time behind bars...

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New International Submissions: Georgia, Luxembourg, and Taiwan

by Nathaniel R

Beginning

We have three more official submissions for Best International Feature Film at the forthcoming Oscars, bringing the number up to nine, and one of them is streaming on Netflix for your pleasure or cathartic misery as the case may be... 

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