Left-Handed Girl

For more than 20 years, Shi-Ching Tsou has been a trusted partner of Anora-director Sean Baker, filling the roles of producer, costume designer, co-writer, and co-director on various films. Here, Baker returns the favour, serving as co-writer, producer, and editor on Tsou’s long-gestating solo feature debut. Like their acclaimed collaboration The Florida Project, Left-Handed Girl is the story of a lopsided family eking out a precarious financial existence, told largely through the eyes of a child — in this case the adorable five-year-old I-Jing (Nina Ye).

Recently arrived in Taipei, single mom Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) opens a noodle stall in the night market, while her stroppy high school dropout teenager I-Ann (Shi-Yuan Ma) works at a betel nut bar. Both are too stressed and miserable to notice when I-Jing starts shoplifting with her “evil” left hand. Tsou plunges us into the city’s relentless hustle while crafting an open-hearted family drama that hits across multiple generations.

This is a film that will travel widely — not just because of the Baker stamp of approval. There’s engagement in its energy, its sense of humour, its simmering feminist anger and the standout performances of three fine leads.

Lee Marshall, Screen International

An assured and lovely portrait of difficult motherhood and painful daughterhood, but it’s perhaps most entrancing for its turning-kaleidoscope-view of the director’s native city, where the characters are the bouncing beads, but Taipei is the glitter and the dazzle.

Jessica Kiang, Variety