Taiwan has chosen Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl as its candidate for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture announced the news on their website on Thursday.
The film, directed, co-written, and produced by Tsou and co-written and edited by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, follows a single mother and her two daughters as they relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall.
Left-Handed Girl received a buzzy world premiere in Cannes Critics’ Week, with Netflix then most of the global rights in June. Netflix will release the film in theaters in on November 14 before launching it on its platform on November 28.
The film will make its North American premiere at theToronto Film Festival premiere on September 6.
Left-Handed Girl marks Tsou’s solo feature debut after a number of collaborations with Baker, co-directing, co-writing and co-producing his second feature credit Take-Out and then also collaborating on Starlet, Tangerine and The Florida Project.
Taiwanese household name Janel Tsai co-stars as a mother who returns to the capital of Taipei with her two daughters, played by Instagram discovery Shih-Yuan Ma and child star Nina Ye, after several years of living in the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night market.
Each in their way will have to adapt to this new environment to make ends meet and maintain the family unity. But when their traditional grandfather forbids his youngest left-handed granddaughter from using her “devil hand,” generations of family secrets begin to unravel.
Alongside Tsou and Sean Baker, producers are Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie, Alice Labadie under the banners of Left-Handed Girl Film Production, LHG Films LTD, Good Chaos and Le Pacte.
