North American Premiere
In the heart of New York’s largest Chinatown, three working-class immigrants eke out a meager living. Taiwanese Amy (Wu Ke-Xi) and mainlander Didi (Xu Haipeng) work at a seedy massage parlor, hoping to save up enough to eventually open a restaurant in Baltimore. In the meantime, Didi spends her off-hours with Cheung (Tsai Ming-liang regular Lee Kang Sheng), a middle-aged construction worker who sends money back to his family in Taiwan. When together, there’s an easy intimacy—until tragedy strikes, leaving a painful absence in its wake.
Directed with remarkable assurance by writer-director Constance Tsang, Blue Sun Palace is an absorbing exploration of the liminal, in-between spaces of its immigrant subjects. Daringly divided into two temporally distinct segments, the film derives its power from the characters’ attempts to bridge the gap, to find comfort amid grief, guilt, and loss. Featuring textured 35mm compositions by Norm Li, a spare score from composer Sami Jano, and a distinctive slow-cinema aesthetic, this is a film that finds beauty in transience, reveling in the evanescence of the everyday.
French Touch Prize, Critics’ Week 2024
Media Partner
Lee Kang Sheng, Ke-Xi Wu, Haipeng Xu
USA
2024
In Mandarin and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Sally Sujin Oh, Eli Raskin, Tony Yang
Screenwriter
Constance Tsang
Cinematography
Norm Li
Editor
Caitlin Carr
Production Design
Evaline Wu Huang
Original Music
Sami Jano
Constance Tsang
Constance Tsang is a Chinese American filmmaker based in New York. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in Screenwriting and Directing where she received the Robert Gore Rifkind Launch Fund. Her work is supported by Starlight Stars Collective and Tribeca Film. Blue Sun Palace (2024) will be her first feature.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Sentimental Value
A once-revered director crashes back into his family’s lives, eager to recruit his daughter for a film role. When she declines, he finds a new muse in an eager but unpolished Hollywood star, sending his botched reconciliation spiraling into chaos.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
L'Étranger
Recreating 1940s Algeria in vivid, high contrast black and white cinematography, L'Etranger is erotic, enigmatic and brutal in equal measures, a masterful screen version of Albert Camus's insoluble classic of existential alienation.
The Chronology of Water
Kristen Stewart's fearless directorial debut is based on the best-selling memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots), a chronicle of her abusive childhood, traumatized adulthood, and escapes through swimming, drugs, sex, and ultimately writing.