A CITY OF SADNESS

A Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival, this powerful epic is considered by many to be director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s greatest achievement. After WWII, control of Taiwan is ceded by Japan to the mainland Chinese government; the ensuing campaign of repression soon ensnares the Lin brothers (Tony Leung, Chen Sung-yung and Jack Kao). Viewing a nation’s history through the lens of a single family, Hou not only illuminates the formerly taboo subject of the “White Terror,” but shows how events that shake a society filter down to shape the lives of everyday people. In Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Japanese with English subtitles.