Left-Handed Girl

A mother returns to Taipei with her two daughters and sets up a small stall in the night market. The elder girl works and carries the family, while the younger one, being left-handed, is told by her grandfather that the left hand is the devil's hand. The child takes it seriously. The subject is not poverty but a child being persuaded there is something wrong with her. The younger girl starts attributing every piece of mischief to her left hand, clearing herself by blaming an organ, and the film finds that childish logic both funny and frightening. The form lives inside the night market: crowd, light, the noise of stalls, narrow passages. Part of it was shot on a phone, which made it possible to put the camera inside the crush. It is Tsou Shih-ching's first solo feature as a director. She had worked with Sean Baker for more than two decades and the two co-directed Take Out; here Baker co-wrote the script and edited it. The film premiered in Critics' Week at Cannes in 2025, took two prizes there, and was submitted by Taiwan for the international feature Oscar. Who it is for: viewers who like Taiwanese cinema and family stories set inside a city. Who it is not for: anyone who will mind the tonal shift into melodrama at the end; the film departs noticeably from its realist ground.