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.
Oscar Submission: Taiwan
Missed it at VIFF? Catch it at the VIFF Centre after the festival.
Supported by
Janel Tsai, Shih-Yuan Ma, Nina Ye, Brando Huang, Akio Chen, Xin-Yan Chao
Taiwan/France/USA/UK
2025
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Alex C. Lo, Neill Barham, Aditya Chand, Jennifer Jao
Producer
Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker, Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie, Alice Labadie
Screenwriter
Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker
Cinematography
Ko-Chin Chen, Tzu-Hao Kao
Editor
Sean Baker
Shih-Ching Tsou
Shih-Ching Tsou is a Taiwanese-American director based in New York. She co-created Take Out with Sean Baker and produced his films Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket. Her solo directorial debut, Left-Handed Girl, premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week 2025.
Filmography: Take Out (2004)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
GoodFellas
The ultimate crash and burn movie, Scorsese's exhilarating gangster film is infused with the excitement of fast cash, girls, guns and drugs. Yet this brazenly amoral movie also captures the brutality, betrayal, and spiritual void of the criminal world.
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino announced himself to the world with this ingeniously fractured heist movie, carved into character-centric chapters, riffing breezily on pop culture, but counterpointing all this with blood-soaked intensity.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
