A City of Sadness (1989)

Over the weekend I watched "A City of Sadness" a Taiwanese film at Austin Film Society. It tells a story of a family struggling in silence for inclusion in the society and searching for their cultural identification while all the historical events unfolding in Taiwan in 1940s with the arrival of mainland China, right after the departure of  Japanese colonial era.

Aside from the beauty of the landscape scenery alone, or the cinematography, usage of same landmarks throughout the movie to create a concept of passing time and absolutely satisfactory long shots - the movie answered a lot of questions for me such as to why Taiwanese nationals struggle with the sense of identity, the confusion over the many languages spoken there, and the crisis of flying the flag in international events or using their country name freely!  The Q/A at the end was also very helpful to put the storyline in perspective, it was indeed a remarkable movie that I can speak very highly  of.