Skip to content
PIFF 42 Official Selection

A Family Tour

Directed by Ying Liang

Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia • 2018 • 107 mins. • In Mandarin, Cantonese, Min Nan with subtitles

Showtimes & Past Screenings

Based on director Ying Liang’s own story of political exile, A Family Tour follows Chinese-born dissident filmmaker Yang Shu (Nai An) and her family from Hong Kong to Taiwan for a film festival. Beyond professional reasons, Yang is there to see her ailing mother Chen (Zhe Gong), traveling on a sightseeing tour. They haven’t seen each other in five years due to Yang’s exile, resulting from her pointedly political films. Ying thus uncovers a complex family dynamic, mining fertile emotional ground as mother and daughter reconcile past choices and their place in the complex political landscape of Greater China. “If politics were enough, A Family Tour would suffice as a hard-won work of freedom in the face of unjust authority, as an act of revelatory declaration in the face of enforced silence. But Ying’s film is also a work of beauty.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker.

Filmography: When Night Falls (2012)

Sponsored by Bulleit Frontier Whiskey and Ketel One Vodka

Appears in: 42nd Portland International Film Festival, PIFF 42: Global Panorama

The Northwest Film Center recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence.