Pearlly Chua

In a community of farmers living on the Malaysia-Thailand border, Hong Im recently lost her husband under mysterious circumstances. Hong Im uses black magic to address villagers’ everyday issues until she encounters a ghost that reveals a secret about her husband’s death.

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In multicultural Malaysia society, the mere existence of a baby hatch remains a whispered taboo, condemned and branded as an enabler of moral decay, punishable by God. Three committed employees of a Kuala Lumpur baby hatch facility navigate a maze of societal opposition to empower women from diverse backgrounds grappling with the complex notion of bodily autonomy.

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An elderly Chinese woman living alone in a village prepares for the Qing Ming festival. The grief of losing her husband parallels the pain of missing her grandson who had left to work in the city. Her daily routine navigates a transitional loop of immediate changes and immense loneliness.

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For 49 years, Ah Eng and Dou E were trapped in the "513" timeline. In 1969, post-election tensions gripped Kuala Lumpur when the Cantonese street opera "Snow in June" showcased Dou E, portrayed by the troupe master. Amid a riot, Ah Eng and her mother sought refuge with the troupe, losing contact with her brother and father. In 2018, Ah Eng returned to Kuala Lumpur and unexpectedly encountered "Dou E" at the cemetery.

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1986, in a Malaysia-Thailand border village, a recently widowed Siamese woman still cooks her husband's favourite dish. After her son brings the husband's ancestral tablet home, the durian tree starts bearing its fruits while red spinach grows under the tree...

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A young apprentice healer tries to suppress his supernatural abilities so he can fit in with the other kids, but when a malicious spirit breaks out in his apartment, he decides to use his abilities while dark family secrets are revealed.

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Discovering a severed bird that is missing its body, Ah Ger decides to make a mock body for the poor creature and give it a proper burial. Her intentions prompt an unexpected visit by the ghost of her late grandmother appearing in the form of the dead bird, urging Ah Ger to help find and care for her egg. Her actions caused her to be terribly misunderstood and punished by her mother.

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Cheong, a Chinese man, falls sick after a row with his neighbour. His wife Yan is desperately looking for a remedy to cure her husband. Throughout the journey, Yan endures strange encounters and unearthly experiences. Finally, Yan is convinced that she should seek help from the village shaman. Mysteries, legends and shamanism surround Yan with unknowns yet to be solved.

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Unfolding the life of a taxi driver that uses his services as a front for extortion rackets and other criminal activities. When his hot-headed younger brother's impulsive behaviour lead the cops and triad to their doorstep. As the eldest, he stops at nothing to protect them all.

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Zhang, a middle aged man struggling with a dead end job as an insurance sales person, on the verge of divorce with his wife, losing custody of her daughter, and on top of all this he has to take care of his father who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Unknowingly Zhang is invited to join an underground fighting game for financial purposes, but eventually Zhang becomes hooked on the fights and turns professional.

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In 1990, Neurologist Lam Sik Ka and his former flame suffer from the generational sleep curse that rooted in their both families war engagement during World War Two. Lam tries to save her flame from the grudge.

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When a rare earth plant is being built near a coastal town, its inhabitants fall into despair, fearful of its radioactive effects.

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If It’s Not Now, Then When? mostly takes place in an apartment inhabited by three members of a family (though never at the same time): mother Pearlly Chua (from Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone), daughter Tan Bee Hung and young son Kenny Gan. Their father seems recently to have died. The mother leaves early and returns late, out on long walks in the park with a lover whom the daughter and her best friend try to spy on. The daughter pecks away at a computer at work and has a desultory affair with her married boss, which he carries on between his business and family phone calls. And the son breaks into cars and “recycles” the electronics he finds.

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Mrs. Chew and her three daughters run a small but flourishing restaurant. Most of the customers come for the house specialty: Homemade Curry - cooked from an old family recipe. Nobody suspects that the special ingredient that turns Mrs Chew's curry from standard fare into a gourmet's delight is human flesh!

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Ping Ping is 19 and wants to go to Japan to work in a car parts company. She's under the guardianship of her aunt, Madame Tien, who shuffles her between two jobs - working in a pig farm, and cleaning dishes in a rundown restaurant. Tien is also involved in a 'baby factory' scheme, pairing young women with migrant workers and then selling the babies for money. Both survive with each other in a love-hate symbiotic manner, until a truth about her aunt is revealed to Ping Ping.

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Free interpretation of the myth. Tsai Ming-liang propels a woman neglected by her lover in the mob of the bus station of Kuala Lumpur.

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Rawang, an immigrant from Bangladesh living in awful conditions, takes pity on a Chinese man, Hsiao-kang, who is beaten up and left in the street. Rawang lovingly nurses him on a mattress he found. When he is almost healed, Hsiao-kang meets the waitress Chyi. His love for Rawang is put to the test.

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Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.

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