Online ticket sales for the 2026 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival opened on the official website last Sunday (10/25), breaking the festival’s opening-day box office record thanks to the enthusiastic support of film fans! Today (10/29), in addition to announcing additional screenings, the festival revealed five mystery films, including A List for Tomorrow, starring acclaimed Japanese actor Hiroshi Abe, who will attend its world premiere at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival; You Can See Everything, hailed as one of the year’s must-see films, has also joined the lineup in response to fervent demand from fans; The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, starring Cannes Best Actor winner John Turturro and acclaimed at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals; Bunker, featuring Oscar-winning real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz acting opposite each other; and Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, in which Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actor Mahershala Ali takes on the role of the ultimate father.
In A List for Tomorrow, Tea Friends writer-director Bunji Sotoyama once again demonstrates his humanistic concern. Hiroshi Abe plays a man who finally returns to society after spending 40 years in a psychiatric hospital and, with the help of popular idol Ren Nagase, sets out to fulfill the wishes for a new life that he has written on sticky notes. Taking the issue of long-term psychiatric hospitalization as its starting point, the film illuminates the joys and sorrows of ordinary people struggling to survive in forgotten corners of the city. Through sincere cinematic language, it distills the kindness and love within the complexities of human nature into a warm and healing fairy tale for adults.
You Can See Everything focuses on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, who once stunned Silicon Valley with the claim that a single drop of blood could test for hundreds of diseases, only to ultimately be convicted of fraud. Set on the eve of her imprisonment, the story follows a film crew granted access to her private life in the hope of gaining a new understanding of the controversial startup entrepreneur through an intimate portrait. As filming progresses, however, the unwavering accounts that Elizabeth and her husband present to the camera gradually begin to shake the filmmakers’ initial skepticism. Blending documentary footage with dramatic reenactments, the film constantly shifts between reality and fiction, prompting us to reconsider: when even what we see with our own eyes may not be the truth, what can we still believe?
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York stars Barton Fink’s Cannes Best Actor winner John Turturro as a professional pickpocket whose income has dwindled with the rise of electronic payments, only for him to unexpectedly become entangled with the mob. Turturro brings worldly warmth to this streetwise veteran whose talent for stealing has fallen out of step with the times. His thefts are as graceful as a dance, while his nimble fingers reveal extraordinary ingenuity. Inheriting the spirit of 1970s New Hollywood and filmed throughout the streets and alleyways of New York’s five boroughs, the film unfolds like a tender love letter to the city’s old soul.
For Bunker, The Father director Florian Zeller pens his first original screenplay, bringing together Oscar-winning real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz in electrifying performances as members of a Spanish architect’s family living in London. Their encounters with a troublesome neighbor and a mysterious benefactor expose the illusion of security enjoyed by the upper class, weaving marital power struggles, domestic suspense, and observations on class into a contemporary fable.
Rising writer-director Bassam Tariq’s highly anticipated new film Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother uses religious teachings to explore a family in crisis, transforming Moonlight’s Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actor Mahershala Ali into a hitman taking on the role of the ultimate father for a new generation. After his wife dies unexpectedly, he returns home and begins life as a single parent, only to find himself surrounded by assassins, gangsters, and influencers, with Muslims, Mormons, and miracles colliding in all-out chaos. Armed with a long blade in one hand and a diaper in the other, he must fight his way through disaster to survive.
The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival has also confirmed additional screenings of Possible Love, Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, NAZA: Collateral Damage, Sakamoto Days, Bucking Fastard, On the Edge, Yo (Love Is a Rebellious Bird), Ben'Imana, The Sheep Detectives, Sense and Sensibility, Taste of Cherry, Elephant, and The Outsiders. Please visit the official website for details of the additional screenings. Tickets for the mystery screenings and additional screenings will go on sale next Monday (11/2) at 1:00 p.m. through the official online ticketing system and at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival’s pre-festival service counter. Film fans are encouraged to seize the opportunity and secure their tickets early.
Stills courtesy of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee