Skip to main content
Strawberry Shortcake film image; photo with a burn hole in it laying across woman's face

Strawberry Shortcake

草莓蛋糕

VIFF Short Forum

World Premiere

A teenage girl falls into a Freudian phantasy with her mother.

 

Supported by

    

Media Partner

Community Partner

Director
Cast

Heme Liao, Rou-Ming Huang, Winnie Liu

Credits
Country of Origin

Taiwan

Year

2024

Language

In Mandarin with English subtitles

Film Contact
Content Warning

Incest, domestic violence

18+
21 min
Cinemas of Asia Experimental & Avant Garde Family Relations Shorts Women Directors
Studio Lilith

Credits & Director

Producer

Pierre Ieong

Screenwriter

Deborah Devyn Chuang

Cinematography

Chun Wang

Editor

Deborah Devyn Chuang, Jamie Lansdowne

Production Design

Hikky Chen

Original Music

Zun Long

Deborah Devyn Chuang headshot; Strawberry Shortcake director

Deborah Devyn Chuang 莊岱雯

Deborah “Devyn” Chuang is a Taiwanese-American film director and screenwriter. Their debut short film, Mom if I Were a Vampire (2022), premiered at NYC’s NewFest, before screening in 10+ international festivals, including Taipei Film Festival. Devyn’s new project Strawberry Shortcake (2024) was selected as the semi-finalist for the New Voices Filmmaker Grant by NewFest and Netflix. Devyn had worked as an investment banker and a Michelin-starred restaurant cook before beginning their film MFA at Columbia University.

 

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

Afternoons of Solitude

Dir. Albert Serra
125 min

Pacification director Albert Serra turns his unflinching gaze on the subject of bullfighting, and in particular the famous young matador Andrés Roca Rey. The film challenges us to look its subject square in the eye and draw our own conclusions.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Mother and the Bear

Dir. Johnny Ma
100 min

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.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

La Grazia

Dir. Paolo Sorrentino
133 min

A contemplative, mournful but richly imagined movie about a retiring Italian President (Toni Servillo from The Great Beauty) facing two thorny ethical decisions that may define his legacy.

Image: © Andrea Pirrello

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Executioner

Dir. Luis García Berlanga
92 min

Regularly cited as the greatest Spanish film ever made, Berlanga's masterpiece is a pitch black comedy about an undertaker lined up by the state executioner to marry his beautiful daughter -- but he'll also have to inherit the old man's job.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

8

Dir. Julio Medem
126 min

The always stylish, idiosyncratic Basque auteur Julio Medem is back with one of his most ambitious films (and our closing night gala), a sweeping historical romance in eight chapters, spanning eight decades in Spanish history from the 1930s to the present day.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Plague

Dir. Charlie Polinger
95 min

At a water polo camp, Ben is plunged into the deep end of toxic peer pressure. Terrified of incurring his campmates’ wrath, he joins them in tormenting a kid whose skin rash has been branded “the plague”. But then he experiences a breakout of his own...

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre