
Directing
Tsai Ming-liang
Born
1957-10-27 (68)
Place of birth
Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
Known for
Directing
Credits
68 titles
Tsai Ming-liang (Chinese: 蔡 明亮, Pinyin: Cài Míngliàng; born October 27, 1957) is a Malaysian-Taiwanese filmmaker. He has written and directed 11 feature films and has also directed many short films, television films, documentaries and art installations. Tsai is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese cinema. His films have been acclaimed worldwide and have won numerous film festival awards.
Known for
9.0The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (Chinese: 台北金馬影展; pinyin: Táiběi Jīnmǎ Yǐngzhǎn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-pak Kim-má iáⁿ-tián) is a film festival and awards ceremony held annually in Taiwan. It was founded in 1962 by the Government Information Office of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. The awards ceremony is usually held in November or December in Taipei, although the event has also been held in other locations in Taiwan in recent times
Golden Horse Awards
1962
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Three Piglets
2019
6.0Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.
The Wayward Cloud
2005
6.8On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
2003
5.5An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading directors and academics, the film examines topics such as male bonding in kung fu movies, depictions of same-sex bonding and physical intimacy, the emphasis on women's grievances in melodramas, and the career of Yam Kim-Fai, a Hong Kong actress who spent her life portraying men on and off the screen.
Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema
1998
6.3Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.
Days
2021
Film credits
2020s · 7 titles
7.5After the COVID-19 pandemic, Busan International Film Festival founder Kim Dong-ho, at eighty-five, picks up a camcorder for the first time and decides to make a documentary. His lens turns toward cinemas struggling through the crisis, as beloved theaters vanish amid dwindling audiences. Seeking to reconnect with old friends, "Mr. Kim" — now nearing ninety — travels the world to talk with filmmakers and cinephiles. Through these encounters, he reflects on cinema’s past and future, finding wisdom and resilience in a time of transformation. His journey becomes a meditation on change, memory, and the enduring spirit of film.
Mr. Kim Goes to the Cinema
2026
6.8This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.
Wandering
2021
7.2A portrait of the legendary actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, icon of the French New Wave and closely linked to the work of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard.
Jean-Pierre Léaud: The Child of Cinema
2024
NR"For reasons of health, Lee Kang-sheng and I moved to the mountains. We don't have any neighbors. Our house is part of a row of dilapidated houses. I love these abandoned houses. I often walk around in them casually. I think they are beautiful. I said to Lee Kang-sheng: we don't have to go elsewhere to make films anymore. I'll make all my remaining films right here. I got some old chairs and some of my paintings and arranged them in these abandoned houses. And thus, this film was made." Tsai Ming-liang
Where Do You Stand, Tsai Ming-liang?
2022
NRUnveiling Yasujiro Ozu’s legacy through his personal diaries, letters, and interviews, the documentary delves into his life, creative process, and lasting impact on filmmaking.
The Ozu Diaries
2025
A leading figure of the "Second New Wave" of Taiwanese cinema, award-winning Director Tsai Ming-Liang has left his mark on the art world with his minimalist dialogues, contemplative fixed shots, and unmistakable depictions of urban settings. But what's left to achieve when most of your dreams have come true? Exclusively for TaiwanPlus, Tsai, who promised himself not to make more than ten feature films - but already has eleven to his credit - discusses the origins of his art and the future of his cinematographic commitment.
The Pursuit of a Cinematic Dream - Tsai Ming-Liang
2022
No synopsis available yet.
Making-of du tournage de Tsai Ming-Liang au Centre Pompidou
2022
2010s · 6 titles
5.2French Cinema Mon Amour is an ensemble film in which each contributor brings their own voice, their own particular approach, their culture, and their language to produce a portrait of French cinema.
French Cinema Mon Amour
2015
7.1With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.
Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema
2014
6.3A contemplative trip down memory lane with one of the leading voices of the Second New Wave of Taiwanese Cinema. Saw Tiong Guan clearly established a very personal bond with his subject, and also found many of Tsai Ming-liang’s colleagues prepared to complete this portrait of a quiet yet outspoken artist.
Past Present
2013
6.6Composed of a series of portrait shots of mostly anonymous individuals, filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's digital experiment turns the human face into a subject of dramatic intrigue.
Your Face
2018
7.3Lush jungle and a building in ruins are the ideal stage for a film-confession that defies storytelling and goes beyond conversation on cinema. Tsai Ming-Liang and his actor Lee Kang-sheng confess and put on stage a pièce in which attention and slowness are in tune with the rhythm of memory. The unveiling of Tsai Ming-liang’s filmmaking: from Stray Dogs to the most intimate notes of the director-actor relationship.
Afternoon
2015
NRSix authorities of cinema describe their approach to transcendence, mysticism, spirituality and life after dead.
Wiara
2018
2000s · 9 titles
5.5Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
Visage
2009
5.7A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.
Sleeping on Dark Waters
2008
6.0Richly illustrated with film clips and interviews, OUR TIME, OUR STORY tells the still-evolving story of the Taiwanese "new wave," from its rise in the early 1980s, as the island was democratizing after decades under martial law, through growing international recognition and domestic debate in the 1990s. Spearheaded in its early years by such filmmakers as Edward Yang, Ko I-cheng, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wan Jen, the movement revitalized Taiwan cinema through low-budget experiments that emphasized personal stories, political reflection and stylistic invention. Said filmmakers, writers and actors like Wu Nien-jen and Sylvia Chang, even "second wave" directors Tsai Ming-liang and Lin Cheng-sheng provide fond reminiscences and retrospective insights in this compelling account of one of the most distinctive national cinemas of the last quarter-century.
Our Time, Our Story
2002
10.0Documentary about the work of Nouvelle Vague actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, with interview clips, film clips and contributions from directors and actors he has worked with.
Léaud l'unique
2001
NRThe title of the François Lunel film is the Buddhist proverb concluding by: "all is but illusion". His movie draws the Tsai Ming-Liang's face during the shooting of his movie Visage, which itself is also a movie within a movie.
Flowers in the Mirror, Moon in the Water
2009
6.8Taipei 24H divides 24 hours in Taipei into 8 shorts. It opens with Cheng Fen-fen's upbeat and comedic "Share the Morning", and ends with Lee Kang-sheng running the final leg of this relay with "Remembrance" at 4am. Well-known director Tsai Ming-liang makes a rare appearance visiting a late night coffee shop. Taipei 24H is a contemporary urban chronicle of a city rarely at sleep.
Taipei 24H
2009
NRHuman shortcomings in the pursuit of an idol. Two film school students travel to interview Taiwanese film director Tsai Ming-liang and actor Lee Kang-sheng in Oslo.
Looking for Tsai
2002
About remembrance, of course, but also about the aromas that remain after farewell. A woman says farewell to her coffee shop after 20 years. A regular client is the only person to share this special moment with her. On the radio, farewell to a beloved dancer. With Tsai Ming-liang as the regular client.
Remembrance
2009
NRTsai Ming-liang designed this short film as a farewell to his friend Simon Field, who was about to leave his position as director of the Rotterdam Festival after eight years in office. The piece follows two dogs roaming the Tamshui River in Taipei, accompanied by the director's voice-over as he reads a written dedication for Field.
Moonlight in the River
2003
1990s · 2 titles
5.5An exploration of Chinese cinema and its relationships with gender and sexuality, which the film argues has been more frankly and provocatively explored than in any other national cinema. Utilizing both film excerpts and interviews with many leading directors and academics, the film examines topics such as male bonding in kung fu movies, depictions of same-sex bonding and physical intimacy, the emphasis on women's grievances in melodramas, and the career of Yam Kim-Fai, a Hong Kong actress who spent her life portraying men on and off the screen.
Yang ± Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema
1998
5.5Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.
My New Friends
1995
Series credits
9.0The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (Chinese: 台北金馬影展; pinyin: Táiběi Jīnmǎ Yǐngzhǎn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-pak Kim-má iáⁿ-tián) is a film festival and awards ceremony held annually in Taiwan. It was founded in 1962 by the Government Information Office of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. The awards ceremony is usually held in November or December in Taipei, although the event has also been held in other locations in Taiwan in recent times
Golden Horse Awards
1962
NRNo synopsis available yet.
Three Piglets
2019
No synopsis available yet.
Parola (su una data)
2003
Behind the camera
6.0Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.
The Wayward Cloud
2005
6.0Hsiao-Kang, now working as an adult movie actor, meets Shiang-chyi once again. Meanwhile, the city of Taipei faces a water shortage that makes the sales of watermelons skyrocket.
The Wayward Cloud
2005
6.8On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
2003
6.8On a dark, wet night in Taipei City, a cavernous old picture palace is about to close its doors forever. A meager audience, the remaining few staff, and perhaps even a ghost or two, watch King Hu’s wuxia classic "Dragon Inn", each haunted by memories and desires evoked by cinema itself.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
2003
6.3Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.
Days
2021
6.3Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.
Days
2021
7.3In Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.
Rebels of the Neon God
1994
7.3In Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.
Rebels of the Neon God
1994
6.3An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.
Stray Dogs
2014
6.3An alcoholic man and his two young children barely survive in Taipei. They cross paths with a lonely grocery clerk who might help them make a better life.
Stray Dogs
2014
6.4Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.
To Each His Own Cinema
2007
7.0In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.
The Hole
1998
7.0In the final days of the year 1999, almost everyone in Taiwan has died from a strange plague that ravished the island. As rain pours down relentlessly, a single man is stuck with an unfinished plumbing job and a hole in his floor. This results in a very odd relationship with the woman who lives below him.
The Hole
1998
7.3Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
Vive L'Amour
1994
7.3Three lonely young denizens of Taipei unknowingly share an apartment: May, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-kang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.
Vive L'Amour
1994
6.8A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.
The River
1997
6.8A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.
The River
1997
7.0A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.
What Time Is It There?
2001
7.0A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.
What Time Is It There?
2001
5.5Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
Visage
2009
5.5Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
Visage
2009
5.5Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
Visage
2009
5.5Hsiao-Kang, a Taiwanese film director, travels to the Louvre in Paris, France, to shoot a film that explores the Salomé myth.
Visage
2009
NRA sleeping city, streets without people. A figure in a red robe walks slowly — across a carpet of leaves, over cobblestones, along the cold pavement. Autumn night fog descends upon the city. In the cinema, people watch the monk’s slow steps and fall asleep. Can phantoms meet and understand each other? Night Journey was created in just ten days through a collaboration between Tsai Ming-liang and FAMU students — a tribute to cinema and to Jihlava as a place of silent dreaming.
Night Journey
2025
NRA sleeping city, streets without people. A figure in a red robe walks slowly — across a carpet of leaves, over cobblestones, along the cold pavement. Autumn night fog descends upon the city. In the cinema, people watch the monk’s slow steps and fall asleep. Can phantoms meet and understand each other? Night Journey was created in just ten days through a collaboration between Tsai Ming-liang and FAMU students — a tribute to cinema and to Jihlava as a place of silent dreaming.
Night Journey
2025
7.5He wanders around the Comb of the Wind, where the sea rises and breaks against the shore. Along the way, he passes an old Basque farmhouse, a silent man, a woman drinking water, a woman smoking, punks gathered in a rock bar, and people in the ancient city at sunset. The Diamond Sutra speaks of all living beings in these words: "Specks of dust are not specks of dust; therefore, they are called specks of dust".
Dust
2026
6.5Ximending was once the trendiest area in Taipei, and it's also where Kang-sheng Lee's first film was shot. Twenty years ago, director Ming-liang Tsai asked Lee if he wanted to be in his film, and Lee's answer changed the course of his own life forever. Now Lee returns to where his career began to shoot a film about himself.
Single Belief
2016
6.1In the wee hours of winter a night train travels through a sleepless city. This is a panorama of a Buddhist monk’s journey through Tokyo at night. He also stops at a bath-house in a capsule hotel, where he makes a brief encounter.
No No Sleep
2015
6.0Free interpretation of the myth. Tsai Ming-liang propels a woman neglected by her lover in the mob of the bus station of Kuala Lumpur.
Madame Butterfly
2009
6.0Free interpretation of the myth. Tsai Ming-liang propels a woman neglected by her lover in the mob of the bus station of Kuala Lumpur.
Madame Butterfly
2009
6.3In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.
Journey to the West
2014
7.0The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.
Abiding Nowhere
2024
6.8This short by Tsai Ming-liang, completed in 2021, was filmed at "the Dune" in Yilan, Taiwan, where the eight films in his Walker series were being shown.
Wandering
2021
5.7Having lost all his money in the stock market, a depressed man falls in love with a woman over a suicide helpline.
Help Me, Eros
2007
5.2A collection of shorts by four East Asian directors: Ann Hui on a male-to-female sex change, Kim Tae-yong on an emotional imposture, Gu Changwei on pregnancy in China and Tsai Ming-Liang on time and the city of Hong Kong.
Beautiful 2012
2012
NRIn 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.
No Form
2012
NRIn 2011, Tsai Ming-Liang staged a play, "Only You", for Taiwan's National Theater and Concert Hall. In it, there was a powerfully moving scene where monk Xuanzang walked at an extremely slow pace for half an hour. Lamenting the transient nature of theater, Tsai decided to make a movie out of this slow-walking performance, "No Form", the first of his "Walker Films" series.
No Form
2012
7.5Tsai Ming-liang's new film, Back Home, depicts Anong Houngheuangsy and the daily life of his home village in Laos. We witness buildings in varying states of habitation and disrepair, farm animals, rice fields, religious sites, domestic scenes, a sun-dappled food market, and a dog adorably trying (and failing) to escape a carnival ride.
Back Home
2025
6.3Xiao-Min, engaged before finishing high school, finds herself trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage, with her curiosity about the world unfulfilled. Her monotonous life as a housewife is disrupted by a young intruder, sparking change. Following her divorce, she faces loneliness and confusion about intimacy. What path will she choose now?
The Game They Call Sex
1987
5.7A behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.
Sleeping on Dark Waters
2008

