2026 Golden Horse Film Festival highlights keep coming, with another highly anticipated lineup of Chinese-language and Asian films announced today (10/8). Hong Kong master Yonfan will bring his Venice-premiered epic “Pause” to Taiwan. Running nearly four hours, the film distills almost 60 years of his creative career into a deeply affectionate reflection on cinema, while also revisiting the youthful faces of stars including Maggie Cheung, Cherie Chung, Chow Yun-fat, Stephen Fung, and Daniel Wu. Wayne Wang, the acclaimed director of “The Joy Luck Club,” adapts Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s celebrated novel in “Diary of a Mad Old Man” (Diary of a Mad Old Man), casting Lily Franky and Fan Bingbing as a paralyzed elderly man and the daughter-in-law who cares for him day and night. Moving boldly among care, dependence, and seduction, the film brings an aging body into direct conflict with desire that refuses to fade.
Taiwanese director Wang Yi-ling expands her acclaimed short “Do Not Go Gentle in Taipei” into “Running Wild,” reuniting Wang Yu-xuan, Li Xue, Pan Kang-da, and the original cast to revisit the abandon and confusion of young men and women today. In Hong Kong director Cheng Sai-hong’s “All Shall Be Well,” Hedwig Tam of “Tiger Stripes” plays a shipwreck survivor who, years later, tries to heal old wounds together with her late boyfriend’s father. Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua’s singular “The Moon Is Here” blends the legends of Chang’e and Hou Yi with science-fiction wuxia and romance. Golden Horse Best Actor Lee Kang-sheng appears as the matchmaker god, while Huang Guan-zhi and Harry Chang take on period roles, journeying toward the moon in search of love across interwoven realms of reality and illusion.
Two Chinese-language documentaries are equally distinctive. In “We Who Sing and Dance,” “A Holy Family” director Elvis Lu extends his gaze to a Paiwan family in Pingtung, tenderly portraying an Indigenous boy with a feminine gender expression who uses song and dance to convey his struggles and hopes amid the restrictions imposed on gender by tribal tradition and church beliefs. Pan Chih-jan’s “What I Mean,” receiving its world premiere at Golden Horse, closely follows a gay young man’s experience of drug addiction. Through long-term companionship and experiments with the moving image, it depicts the recurring struggle between addiction and recovery and reveals the individual circumstances beneath the stigma. Directors Elvis Lu and Pan Chih-jan will both attend post-screening discussions with audiences.
This year’s festival also brings together many outstanding works by established and emerging Asian directors. “Tiger” (Tiger) stars Takashi Kawaguchi as a gay masseur preparing to enter GV; when his father becomes critically ill, he is drawn into an inheritance dispute and the difficulties of forming a same-sex family. “The Burning Giants” (The Burning Giants) by “Manta Ray” director Phuttiphong Aroonpheng transforms the oppression of marginalized communities into a dreamlike allegory through a mysterious smoke that makes those who inhale it feel scorched by invisible flames. Wregas Bhanuteja’s “Levitating” (Levitating) turns a traditional Indonesian possession ritual into a youthful carnival, as a young shaman sounds his flute and leads the crowd into the trance-like world of spirit possession.
The NETPAC Award (NETPAC Award), which champions emerging Asian filmmakers, presents a formidable competition this year. Alongside Taiwanese director Wang Yi-ling’s “Running Wild” and Hong Kong director Cheng Sai-hong’s “All Shall Be Well” is “Elephants in the Fog” (Elephants in the Fog), the debut feature by “Shambhala” screenwriter Abinash Bikram Shah and winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes. Its missing-person mystery delves into Nepal’s distinctive “Kinnar” third-gender culture, and the film will represent Nepal in the race for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The Philippines’ Oscar submission, “Filipiñana” (Filipiñana), exposes the class ugliness and colonial scars beneath the manicured turf of an elite golf club through the eyes of a young female worker. Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe winner “Fruit Gathering” (Fruit Gathering) is a rare Myanmar film centered on lesbian lives. It sensitively portrays the labor conditions of contemporary women in Myanmar while revealing how same-sex intimacy remains suppressed there. Vietnamese director Lê Bảo’s new film “Hearing” (Hearing) continues the minimalist, experimental style of his earlier “Taste.” A middle-aged technician travels from place to place installing sound-level meters, using clamor, silence, and faint reverberations to measure the unspoken emotional distance between himself and his family. The South Korean film “The World Before” (The World Before) follows a girl’s first stirrings of love on a remote island in midsummer, charting her growth as she learns to see herself and her hometown anew. In the Indian film “Our Share of Sand” (Our Share of Sand), a girl becomes entangled in an accident connected to her father’s illegal sand mining and, caught between family loyalty and the truth, confronts deeply rooted caste discrimination and labor exploitation. These films will join “Bubblegum Girl” and “A Life of Lies,” both nominated for Best New Director at this year’s Golden Horse Awards, as well as the previously introduced Japanese film “Fujiko Never Loses,” for a total of 11 titles competing for the “NETPAC Award (NETPAC Award).” The Taiwan Film Critics Society will also select the recipient of the Taiwan Film Critics Society Award from among them.
The program also features many unmissable Chinese-language shorts, including three works from PTS XS’s first documentary-short series, “Future, Future”: “Piercing the Water” by Wu Fan, director of “Xi-Xi”; “What She Didn’t Say” by Hsu Ya-ting, director of “Island of the Winds”; and “Myanmar Girl” by Huang Ling-hua, nominated for this year’s Golden Horse Awards. Following the life experiences of a Tao youth, a Taiwanese girl, and a Yangon high school student, the films examine the challenges of growing up and facing the future in different environments. Chang Chun-yu, the Golden Bell-winning director of “Crown Shyness,” explores an unforgettable summer shared by a grandparent and grandchild in “The Biggest,” using the learning of Taiwanese to give voice to everything in the world. Yang Tsung-hua’s “Head Down, Eyes Closed” depicts the pull between dreams and friendship through the everyday rehearsals of a school wind band. “Where the Lights and Orchids Fade,” shortlisted in the documentary category of the Student Academy Awards, takes mixed-race director Lan Hsien’s surname as its point of departure, interweaving a journey to Taiwan in search of family roots with a mountain expedition in search of orchids to ask where one belongs.
“Unruly Theater,” a short by “Armored Cat: Hacbie” animation director Ho Lik and adapted from cartoonist Yeung Hok-tak’s work, blends the innocent affection of an elementary-school boy and girl with chivalric adventure and cyberpunk, confronting school discipline and freedom head-on. Chen Chien’s “Fish, Goat, Flower” follows a rural boy traveling to the city to choose a gift for his mother and reflects on how love is expressed. Tsai Mu-shih’s “A Tiny Death” observes the birth of affection and the transformation of a relationship through two girls’ nighttime escape. In “Withering Asahi,” director Fok Pui-yu brings together Tai Bo and Angela Yuen, using plant seeds to connect the bond between father and daughter with the passage of time. Wong Hoi-wai’s short “Talk to Me” uses uncanny communication between humans and animals to reveal the distance between a mother and son. In both form and subject, these shorts promise filmgoers the pleasure of discovering new talent.
The 2026 Golden Horse Film Festival will run from 11/6 to 22. A program guide will be held at Taipei New Horizon on Wednesday evening, 10/21, and ticket sales will begin on Sunday, 10/25. More Golden Horse news will be announced in the coming weeks. Follow the official Golden Horse website, Facebook page, and Instagram, or download the Golden Horse APP for the latest updates.
Stills courtesy of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee