Directed by Ying Liang
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia • 2018 • 107 mins. • In Mandarin, Cantonese, Min Nan with English subtitles
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)
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