A City of Sadness

In 1945 Taiwan, Japanese rule ends and the Kuomintang government takes over, and the Lin family has to make its way through the new order. Hou Hsiao-hsien follows the brothers, among them the deaf-mute photographer Wen-Ching (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), through the February 28 Incident of 1947. Wen-Ching works in his studio and tends to the people close to him, trying to keep an ordinary life going while the island's politics close in around his family.