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Taiwan / 2025 / 125min
Director：SHU Qi

Introverted girl Xiaoli’s encounter with free-spirited classmate Lili marks the beginning of her liberation from a repressive life, and her search for her own path. As she grows, she finds herself caught in a struggle between the sorrow she has inherited from her mother, and her passionate longing for freedom.

Internationally renowned actor Shu Qi embarks on her first project as a feature film director with “Girl,” set in Keelung, Taiwan, in the late 1980s. Every day Xiaoli faces domestic conflict and the pain of growing up. We follow the story of a young girl yearning to feel loved at home, yet is emotionally rocked by a complicated relationship with her mother and violence from her father. She begins to glimpse faint glimmers of light from inside her closed-off world through her friendship and small escapades with Lily, a classmate with whom she instantly becomes fast friends. This semi-autobiographical film, based on Shu Qi’s own childhood recollections, favors the weave of memory and delicate emotional shifts to dramatic narrative development. The film is unmistakably grounded in a profound comprehension of cinematic expression, with its subtle camerawork and framing that reserves a place for framing rich in negative space—strongly reflecting the influence of Taiwanese New Cinema, particularly Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Director’s statement

I still remember the summer of 2013, while we were waiting for the lighting setup on The Assassin, I was outside the studio with Director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, chatting and smoking. Out of the blue, he told me I should try directing myself. I hesitated and asked, “Can I?” And he said, “Of course. Write it yourself—start with something you know best, something you really want to say.”

From that day onward began my nearly ten-year journey of screenwriting—on and off, rewriting, tearing it down, rebuilding it, and then tearing it down again. I once spent a whole year just thinking about the ending, only to dismantle and restructure it again. The process was endless and filled with doubt…

Then in 2023, I was invited to serve as a jury member of Venice Film Festival. After watching one beautiful film after another, I suddenly felt a strong impulse—not to overthink anymore and to finish the script for Girl as soon as I could. So after the festival, I didn’t leave Italy. Instead, I stayed in a hotel in Milan and, over the course of more than two weeks, finally completed the screenplay that had been lingering in my mind for ten years.

With the help of many wonderful people in the film industry, I was fortunate to finish filming in the late summer of 2024. And just now, in June 2025, after many challenges, the film has finally come to life. Of course, as a first-time director, there are inevitably some flaws, but this is a story I deeply wish to share—a story that opens up a conversation about the powerful impact of one’s family of origin, for better or worse.

In the film, whether it’s the mother, Hsiao-lee, Li-li, or even the classmates who briefly pass by, each of them may reflect the frightening realities and shadows that many modern women faced in childhood—traumas that make reconciliation with family or even with oneself impossible, that make starting a family terrifying, or worse, lead one to unconsciously pass on those traumas to their own daughters…

I sincerely hope you will like Girl, a film that has lived in my mind for eleven years.