After premiering at this 12 months’s Cannes Movie Competition, the place our personal Ryan Lattanzio known as it “a visually propulsive portrait” and hailed filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou as “a assured directorial expertise with a uncommon exuberance,” “Left-Handed Lady” is getting ready for its subsequent step: Awards season contender.
Netflix picked up the movie, which debuted in Cannes’ Critics’ Week part, on the competition, and IndieWire can right this moment announce that the streamer will bolster the movie with each a theatrical launch (on Friday, November 14) and a streaming launch on its platform (on Friday, November 28). The movie is in competition as Taiwan’s nationwide choice for the Oscars and has world distribution. You can even see three new stills, unique to IndieWire, each up prime and beneath.
The movie is Tsou’s debut solo directorial outing, however she’s been a mainstay in indie cinema for many years. A longtime collaborator of the celebrated filmmaker (and now multi-Oscar-winning filmmaker) Sean Baker, Tsou produced Baker’s movies “Starlet,” “The Florida Challenge,” and “Tangerine.” The duo additionally co-directed, co-wrote, and produced the 2004 gem “Take Out.”
And their collaboration continues with “Left-Handed Lady,” which Tsou and Baker wrote collectively (and which Baker additionally edited). Tsou and Baker additionally produced the movie, alongside Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie, and Alice Labadie. The movie stars Janel Tsai, breakout little one actress Nina Ye, Teng-Hui Huang, and Shih-Yuan Ma.
Per the movie’s official synopsis: “A single mom and her two daughters return to Taipei after a number of years of residing within the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night time market. Every of their method should adapt to this new setting to make ends meet and preserve the household unity. However when their conventional grandfather forbids his youngest left-handed granddaughter from utilizing her ‘satan hand,’ generations of household secrets and techniques start to unravel.”
At Cannes, Tsou advised IndieWire how her two-decade expertise working with Baker ready her to direct a film set in her hometown: “I’ve discovered a lot working with Sean, as a result of every part in his movies is hands-on. I used to be doing loads of issues on set, from studying the analysis course of to speaking to folks from the group. We tried to inform the story as actual as doable.”
For Tsou, who has not directed in over 20 years, the expertise of creating the movie has been lengthy within the works and very lengthy desired. “For ‘Left-Handed Lady,’ I had the thought since I used to be very younger. The primary time I introduced it to Sean, he thought it was actually fascinating,” she mentioned. “So we began to jot down the draft collectively. After each different movie that we completed, we might all the time come again to this movie. Sadly, the time [to make it] wasn’t proper. It took some time to get the funding collectively, to get folks . I believe it’s all about timing. That is the time for ‘Left-Handed Lady.’ That is the time for me to come back again to the director’s seat.”
