A City of Sadness
Hou Hsiao-Hsien · 1989
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1989 Golden Lion winner follows a Taiwanese family in Jiufen during the turbulent years after Japan’s surrender, the February 28 Incident, and the onset of the White Terror. Using long takes, multilingual dialogue, and a muted, observational style, it renders political trauma through domestic detail — photographs, trains, staircases, silences — rather than exposition or polemic. Starring Tony Leung, Li Tian-lu, and Jack Kao, it is the first Taiwanese film to confront state violence openly, and remains a landmark of the New Taiwanese Cinema movement.
