Father to Son

Tiptoe  (Taiwan, 2019)

U.S. premiere!

When her mother goes missing and her father remains sadly unreliable, the full weight of the world falls on the shoulders of a young girl who suddenly finds she must manage for herself and her younger brother until order is restored in this powerfully composed portrait of childhood adaptability and perseverance.

DCP, color, in Mandarin with English subtitles, 17 min. Director/Screenwriter: I-Ju Lin. Cast: Tang-Ning Chiang, En-Tzu Hsieh, Nai-Han Hsu.

Father to Son  (Taiwan, 2018)

Los Angeles premiere!

Bittersweet and beautiful, Father to Son finds under the vibrant illuminations of a hardware store the quiet tremblings of an old soul. The store’s purveyor Van is turning 60 and he’s got the body of an old cowboy: rugged, but not as tough as he might like to believe. Around him, his peers are confronting their mortality, and so, with the opportunity to connect with a young adult son and to travel to Japan, he reluctantly confronts his own, along with the emotional toll of inter-generational inheritance: of genes, baggage, lies. Sensitively told through characters who mirror each other and journeys that echo those taken years ago, Hsiao Ya-chuan depicts a man realizing that ignoring the future is as impossible as brushing aside the past.

DCP, color and b/w, in Taiwanese, Mandarin and Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles, 115 min. Director/screenwriter: Hsiao Ya-chuan. Cast: Michael JQ Huang, Aria Wang, Fu Meng-Po.

Watch the trailer: