The nominees for the 63rd Golden Horse Awards have been announced. Arrested Memory leads with 11 nominations, followed by Girl with 10, while Double Happiness and We Are Born Good each received nine. Before the winners are revealed at the awards ceremony, follow Giloo as we revisit the nominees’ earlier works and see how they gradually developed their distinctive approaches to performance and visual storytelling through each new project.
Shu Qi stepped behind the camera for the first time to direct the feature film Girl, which received 10 nominations: Best Narrative Feature, Best New Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best New Performer, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Makeup and Costume Design, Best Original Film Score, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Effects.
Revisiting Earlier Works to See How Actors Build Their Characters
Before watching Girl, revisit the screen presence Shu Qi developed over the years in front of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s camera. Millennium Mambo captures her drifting through a hypnotic city, while The Assassin conveys emotional tension through an exceptionally restrained performance. Watching these two films alongside Girl offers a closer look at how she transformed years of acting experience into a directorial language.
LIU Kuan-ting, nominated for Best Leading Actor for Double Happiness, previously played the children’s television performer Shiba San in the short film Shiba San and Meow Chan. On camera, he plays a cheerful character who answers children’s many questions. Off camera, however, he is trapped in a secret relationship that cannot be made public. In just 31 minutes, his performance reveals a subtle contrast between the character’s bright exterior and emotional predicament.
CHUNG Suet-ying is nominated for Best Leading Actress for We Are Born Good. She previously appeared in the Hong Kong Fresh Wave short film The Gentle Madness, in which her character turns her own family story into a documentary. When her mother suddenly returns home, long-buried secrets begin to surface, raising questions about filming ethics and the manipulation of images. From this early short film to her recent feature performances, CHUNG demonstrates a consistent ability to navigate complex relationships between characters.
Sound Clues Beyond the Screen
The nominees also offer another viewing path through sound. Lim Giong’s score for Girl is nominated for Best Original Film Score, while TU Duu-chih worked on the sound design of both Girl and Arrested Memory, which are both nominated for Best Sound Effects. For those wishing to revisit an earlier collaboration between the two, Millennium Mambo is an excellent starting point. The film intertwines Lim Giong’s electronic sounds with TU Duu-chih’s sound design to create a hypnotic yet vivid metropolitan atmosphere at the turn of the century.
9m88 also demonstrates her cross-disciplinary creativity among this year’s nominated works. She wrote, composed, and performed “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” for Double Happiness, earning a nomination for Best Original Film Song, while also appearing as one of the leads in Girl. Looking at these works together reveals how filmmakers contribute from different positions across acting, music, and sound, bringing different forms of expression to cinema.
Voting for the 63rd Golden Horse Awards takes place in three stages: preliminary, nomination, and final. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on November 22, while the full jury lineup is expected to be revealed in late October. All nominated films will be screened at the Golden Horse Film Festival beginning November 6, with tickets going on sale October 25. Voting for the Golden Horse Audience Choice Award will take place on November 7 and 8 at Hualien Railway Cinema, the Image Museum of Hsinchu City, and Neiwei Arts Center. Registration opens on October 7. Please refer to the official Golden Horse website for details.
Text by Aying Sung
