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5th Taiwan Film Festival returns to cinema

Updated: Sep 4, 2022




Zooming in to contemporary fantasies and challenging boundaries of imagination

With the support and sponsorship from the Ministry of Culture as well as the Taipei Representative Office in Germany, we are delighted to announce the 5th Taiwanese Film Festival in Berlin, organized by Impression Taiwan and cooperated with Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute and Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit. Screenings will commence from 23 September to 2 October, at the Kino in der Kulturbrauerei. In these ten days, we will be delivering 12 works on three diverse themes, including both short films and feature-length films. Screenings in the previous two years were unfortunately kept solely online due to COVID-19, so we are thrilled that the 2022 festival will return to physical edition. We hope it will bring more in-person joy and fun to our audience in Germany.


Taiwan Film Festival Berlin is the largest scale event in Europe for Taiwanese art and culture. Since officially established in Germany, 2017, our curation team has been working on this annual festival for five consecutive years. The 2022 festival is centered around the theme of ‘Island Fantasia’ and challenges the audience’s imagination with our diverse programme and hence, creates a unique and personal filmic experience. Jhy-wey Shieh- Taiwan’s Representative in Germany, also sends his congratulations and high hopes: ‘As the Taiwan Film Festival Berlin launches the 5th year, its reputation keeps growing and attracts more and more in the arts and culture circle of Berlin; through film screenings and other cultural events, each year the festival reinforces and refreshes the idea of diversity in Taiwanese films for our audience in Germany. They are working towards shaping the image of Taiwan into a representative Asian brand in Europe as well as revealing the artistry in Taiwanese film-making for the German film industry.”



Opening Film: Nina Wu




For this year’s festival, we have hand-selected Nina Wu and Dear Tenant to discuss developments of the global #MeToo movement in Asia, the situation of the Taiwanese LGBTQ+ community as well as the latest on same-sex marriage. The director of our opening film Nina Wu appeals to the audience: “Just as I express my concerns for certain events and happenings through films, I hope the general public could also use their own professions to make changes to injustice around them.” It is also our first time collaborating with the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit which has been an untiring advocate for democracy, human rights and liberty. We will co-host the opening and closing film screenings, the grant opening night and various symposiums with the hope to exchange thoughts with Europe on a deeper level, thus expanding the reach of current issues in Taiwanese culture and establishing a firm communication bridge with our German audience. Our curation team is working towards opening a global discussion channel via this collaboration to foster further, deeper and more multi-faceted cultural diplomacy.



Closing Film: Dear Tenant


The 8 drama films and 4 short films of the festival are sorted into three main themes: Super Oma, Fantastic Horror and Wild Youth: Taiwan & Hong Kong, with an additional special screening of Listen Before You Sing.


The Super Oma series includes Grandma and Her Ghosts (4K Restoration) and To My Dear Granny, encouraging the audience to explore the common ground for emotional ties within skipped-generation families. There are four short films in the Fantastic Horror theme: Night Bus, Gold Fish, Mama Ping Pong Social Club and Temple of Devilbuster, on top of Till We Meet Again; these films collect the most peculiar and imaginative thinking to push the limit of your known zone. Lastly, both Goddamned Asura and May You Stay Forever Young in the Wild Youth collection reveal, in detail and subtlety, emotional outbursts from the younger generation. It is worth mentioning that the Golden Horse winner- director Fish Wang, has authorised his award-winning Goldfish to be the central visual piece for our Fantastic Horror theme: the goldfish- a fictional giant water creature, swims in the hidden waters of the metropolis, silently eats away residents’ dreams, fantasies and inspirations, and manifests an immense yet mysterious energy field.



Fantastic Horror: Short Film Collage


In addition, the festival will host four themed lectures and six symposiums with directors starting on 23 September. We are extremely grateful to have directors Wang Shaudi, Chu Yu-Ning, Cheng Yu-Chieh, Midi Zhao, Lou Yi-An, Fish Wang as well as screenwriter and actor Ke-Xi Wu join us, who will interact with the audience in various ways. We have many more exciting events planned with these talented individuals so please follow our latest announcements and updates for further information.





Impression Taiwan, established in 2017 in Berlin, Germany, is an NGO that aims to promote films and cultures of Taiwan via the annual “Taiwan Film Festival Berlin” as well as various artistic and cultural activities and individual film screenings. Our volunteers, coming from different regions of Taiwan and with diverse professions, together bring this idea to Berlin and try to bridge between Taiwanese films and Germany. We hope to make stories of Taiwan, our richly diversity and aesthetics more known to audience worldwide, and to bring the unique vibe of Taiwanese films to Berlin.


For media inquiries, please contact: stchiu.it@gmail.com, Shengta CHIU


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