Mere months after sweeping the 97th Academy Awards with “Anora,” Sean Baker is making a tangential return to the Oscar race. The auteur co-wrote and edited “Left-Handed Woman,” the solo debut of his “Take Out” co-director Shih-Ching Tsou, which has been chosen as Taiwan’s official Oscar submission.
Like “Take Out,” “Left-Handed Woman” is about within the restaurant business, following a mother-daughter-daughter relationship in Taipei because the household makes an attempt to open a meals enterprise. An official synopsis for the movie reads: “A single mom and her two daughters return to Taipei after a number of years of dwelling within the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing evening market. Every of their approach 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.”
“Left-Handed Woman” stars Janel Tsai, Nina Ye, Teng-Hui Huang, Shih-Yuan Ma. Tsou, Baker, Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie, and Alice Labadie function govt producers.
The movie premiered within the Critics’ Week part of the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition, the place many critics praised its realist storytelling.
“Tsou applies the stressed vitality of her longtime collaborator’s beloved social-realist works — portraits of women and men working in opposition to their class station to discover a higher dwelling — to ‘Left-Handed Woman,’ which rests on the skillfully directed efficiency of a five-year-old lady (Nina Ye, a small little one who effervescently instructions the digicam) within the lead,” IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio wrote in his Cannes overview. “The film, even when monitoring the older daughter I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and mom Shu-Fen (Janel Tasi) who make up this heartwarming household trio, is at all times contained in the tiny ladies’ eyes and ears, wanting on the world from a spot of wonderment and confusion as she tries to make sense of an grownup world. The lady’s grasp, although, on Mandarin and years spent dwelling with adults and fewer kids makes her already nearly too mature for her personal good.”
“Left-Handed Woman” opens in choose theaters on November 14 earlier than streaming on Netflix on November 28. Watch the trailer under.