From Classroom Idea to Oscar Contender: Left-Handed Girl Premieres at AWFF

Taiwan’s Oscar Hopeful Left-Handed Girl Screens at AWFF After 25-Year Journey; Director Shih-Ching Tsou Says: “This is my story. I had to make it real.”

LAPost / Culver City, CA (November 14, 2025)- Taiwan’s official submission for the 98th Academy Awards’ Best International Feature Film, Left-Handed Girl, received a high-profile screening Thursday at the 11th Asian World Film Festival (AWFF), held at the Culver Theater in Culver City. The film—nominated for nine Golden Horse Awards and already a festival favorite—arrived at AWFF with extraordinary anticipation, not only for its awards prospects but for the remarkable 25-year path that brought it to the screen.

Director Shih-Ching Tsou, along with producer/co-writer/editor Sean Baker, and cast members Shih-Yuan Ma and Nina Ye, all Golden Horse nominees, appeared for the screening and participated in an extended post-film conversation. During the event, AWFF Executive Director Georges N. Chamchoum presented actress Nina Ye with the festival’s Snow Leopard Rising Star Award for her breakout performance.

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A Story Born 25 Years Ago at The New School

The origins of Left-Handed Girl stretch back to 2000, when Tsou and Baker met as graduate students at The New School in New York. Both were drawn to realist filmmaking and independent storytelling. During a film editing class, Tsou shared a memory from her childhood: her grandfather’s belief that using the left hand was “the hand of the devil.” Baker, having never heard of such a tradition, immediately said, “This should be a movie.”

The idea stayed with them.

In 2001, Tsou brought Baker to Taiwan for the first time. The pair wandered night markets, scouted locations, and began shaping the earliest version of the script. But the project—ambitious in scope and set in Taipei’s sprawling night-market world—failed to attract investors. They returned to New York and, with just USD $3,000, made Take Out, launching their long creative partnership.

Nearly a decade later, in 2010, Tsou and Baker returned to Taiwan for a month, writing a full English-language version of Left-Handed Girl and shooting preliminary footage in Tonghua Night Market. Yet again, the project stalled due to lack of financing.

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A Cannes Breakthrough, and the Film Finally Comes to Life

The turning point came in 2021, when Baker’s Red Rocket premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. French investors, intrigued by Tsou’s long-gestating script, agreed to support the film—provided that Taiwanese financing could also be secured. With the final pieces in place, Left-Handed Girl moved into production more than two decades after its initial conception.

For Tsou, the film is deeply personal.
“This is my story, and I had to make it real,” she said during the Q&A. “Some traditions, like valuing sons over daughters or shaming a child for using her left hand, still exist. They certainly existed in my own family. People don’t talk about these things, or they pretend they’re gone. But they’re still there—and that’s why this film had to be made.”

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A Love Letter to Taipei’s Night Markets

Set against the vibrant yet chaotic world of Taipei’s night markets, Left-Handed Girl follows a single mother and her two daughters as they return to Taiwan to start over. When the family’s patriarch forbids his youngest granddaughter from using her left hand, buried trauma resurfaces, igniting an emotional reckoning across three generations of women.

The film stars:

• Shih-Yuan Ma as I-Ann

• Janel Tsai as Shu-Fen

• Nina Ye as I-Jing

• Teng-Hui Huang as Johnny

The visual style—warm tones contrasted with neon urban light—is inspired by Tsou and Baker’s real-life experience wandering Taipei at night.

“I walked into the night markets and felt this beautiful chaos,” Baker recalled. “I knew instantly: this place can hold a great movie.”

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Sean Baker’s “Fourth-Person Perspective” on a Mandarin-Language Film

Though Baker does not speak or understand Mandarin, he served as co-writer, producer, and editor. Tsou explained that the original script was written in English, which she later translated into Mandarin dialogue.

“Sean might not understand the language,” she said, “but he is a deeply experienced editor with an extraordinary sensitivity to emotion. When we watched the raw footage, he was always able to choose the most authentic, honest performance—even without subtitles. He reads the eyes, the body language, the smallest emotional shifts.”

Tsou described Baker’s role as offering a “fourth-person perspective”—a fresh, outside viewpoint that preserved the film’s emotional purity.

Baker, who made awards history in 2024 and 2025 by winning the Palme d’Or and four Oscars for Anora, has said,
“Left-Handed Girl getting nine Golden Horse nominations—I’m over the moon. This film is our love letter to Taipei.”

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Nina Ye Awarded AWFF’s Rising Star

One of the evening’s highlights was the presentation of the Snow Leopard Rising Star Award to actress Nina Ye, who delivers a striking and nuanced performance in her first major feature film role. Audiences and critics have called her one of the most promising new talents in Taiwanese cinema.

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Part of AWFF’s Focus on Taiwan Program

Left-Handed Girl is a centerpiece of this year’s Focus on Taiwan program, running Nov. 13–17 and supported by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and the Taiwan Academy in Los Angeles. The program showcases some of Taiwan’s most acclaimed works, including:

• From Island to Island – Taiwan’s Oscar submission for Best Documentary Feature; with director Lau Kek-huat in attendance

• Side A: A Summer Day – Oscar-qualifying live-action short; director Wan Kin-Fai attending

• Marching Boys – 2025 Golden Horse nominee; producer Kelly Chan and choreographer Damien Fan participating in Q&A

“This year’s Focus on Taiwan invites audiences to see the island through its storytellers,” said AWFF Executive Director Georges N. Chamchoum. “These films carry the heartbeat of a culture.”

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A Triumph 25 Years in the Making

From a classroom conversation in New York to a world premiere backed by international financiers, Left-Handed Girl represents the perseverance of its creators and the unique cultural narratives of Taiwan. With its Golden Horse momentum and Oscar submission, the film stands poised to bring Taiwanese voices to a global stage.

(By Richard Ren / LAPost)