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Summary A single mother and her two daughters return to Taipei after several years of living in the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night market. But when their traditional grandfather forbids his youngest left-handed granddaughter from using her “devil hand,” generations of family secrets begin to unravel.
Directed By: Shih-Ching Tsou
Written By: Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou
Left-Handed Girl
77
7.8
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Summary A single mother and her two daughters return to Taipei after several years of living in the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night market. But when their traditional grandfather forbids his youngest left-handed granddaughter from using her “devil hand,” generations of family secrets begin to unravel.
Directed By: Shih-Ching Tsou
Written By: Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou
Where to Watch
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 18 Critic Reviews
77
100% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 18 Critic Reviews
77
100% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Nov 13, 2025
Tsou and Baker’s script sharply examines what it really means to lose face: which shames are noble, which are indulgent, and what should be passed from one generation to the next?
By Tammy Tarng FULL REVIEW
Nov 21, 2025
Anora Oscar winner Sean Baker produced, edited and cowrote Shih-Ching Tsou’s captivating tale of three generations of women building a life in Taipei. One personal note: As a leftie myself, I strenuously object to the idea that being left-handed is the mark of the devil.
May 21, 2025
Left-Handed Girl is an assured and lovely portrait of difficult motherhood and painful daughterhood, but it’s perhaps most entrancing for its turning-kaleidoscope-view of the director’s native city, where the characters are the bouncing beads, but Taipei is the glitter and the dazzle.
Nov 14, 2025
The ultimate themes of forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption shine through, and the joyous sight of Ye skipping through the corridors of the market is impossible to resist.
Oct 28, 2025
Director Shih-Ching Tsou’s solo debut Left-Handed Girl is a simple but striking drama about growing up in a family living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Oct 31, 2025
Left-Handed Girl is ultimately quite optimistic while never succumbing to the saccharine.
Nov 14, 2025
There’s something impersonal about Left-Handed Girl, like a greeting card written by a close friend with their non-dominant hand. Select words and phrases are legible, but the overall wobbliness has the entire sentiment feeling a bit fuzzy.
User Score
Generally Favorable Based on 6 User Ratings
7.8
83% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
17% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable Based on 6 User Ratings
7.8
83% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
17% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Nov 22, 2025
"Left-Handed Girl" is a funny and deeply heartfelt film showcasing the complexities of life in ways that feel fresh and exciting through a flawed multigenerational family trapped in the condemnation of societal roles that do not serve them. After closely collaborating with Sean Baker, either behind or in front of the camera for over twenty years, Taiwanese film producer, actress, and filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou makes her solo directorial debut with Left-Handed Girl. This isn’t her first foray behind the camera, as she co–helmed 2004’s Take Out with Baker, but Left-Handed Girl marks the first step for Tsou’s mark as an artist who shares the same humanist qualities as the Oscar-winning director, but with a greater emphasis on the relationship forged between the characters than the story directly responding to them. The student has now become the teacher with deeply moving film. When Tsou and Baker (who co-wrote and edited the film) attempt to interlink each story its three protagonists live through, Left-Handed Girl falls apart. What comes before this sequence feels so electric in capturing the routine lives of mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and her daughters, I-Ann (Ma Shih-yuan) and I-Jinn (Nina Yeh), that one doesn’t necessarily need a story to coherently link all of their individual paths inside a drawn-out banquet scene with enough explosive reveals that transform its textured emotions into soap opera-like theatrics. That said, one can’t deny how major the movie feels beforehand, a bold artistic statement that assuredly introduces Shih Ching-Tsou as a voice to watch, especially in the realm of observational cinema, where the camera allows the audience to form a connection with the protagonists without the filmmaker necessarily inferring one way or another. It presents the three women as they are, flawed and vulnerable, while also highlighting their deepest, most human qualities, and lets the audience come up with their own conclusions and feelings towards them. This is done through impeccable, note-perfect performances from its three leads, yes, but mainly in how Tsou and cinematographers Ko-Chin Cheng and Tzu-Hao Kao always capture the protagonists at their level, through a jaw-dropping, immersive use of iPhones. When it follows I-Jinn careening around the streets of the Taipei Night Market, at her height, as we get to experience her perspective filled with joy, wonder, and curiosity about a world she doesn’t yet understand, or is at least trying to, the movie opens itself up so naturally that it doesn’t really need a “narrative” to carry its emotions. Of course, the fact that they are siblings and live in the same household will draw parallels to how each age group (youth, adolescence, and adulthood) sees the world, but each has its own individual stories worth observing at its simplest level. The iPhone cinematography isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s certainly effective at putting us in the shoes of each character, as their stories follow the same throughlines that Baker loves to highlight in his own films. There’s one particular image, shot from the perspective of the ailing father whom I-Ann has essentially disowned, that encapsulates a litany of feelings she has boiling inside of her, which could genuinely take your breath away. Traditional filmmaking wouldn’t convey the same authenticity as Tsou’s iPhone-photographed images do here. The colors are purposefully heightened at night, and the blurry digital grain a phone’s camera carries makes each frame feel as if they hold enough emotional truth for the audience to latch onto the characters and their individual – and often collective – plights. There’s a real sense of play in how both cinematographers use their central device, making us experience the Taiwan cityscape as a place we can touch, smell, and feel every ounce of its often claustrophobic, but occasionally beautiful, environment. It’s through this digitized language that we ultimately form a connection between the characters, only to have them break our hearts in a million pieces near its final section.
Report
Dec 1, 2025
‘Left-Handed Girl’ is a warm and highly entertaining film in which Sean Baker, although making himself feel stylistically and narratively (he co-wrote and edited), gives the space director Shih-Ching Tsou needs to play in her own universe by defining the tone and making Taipei a character itself in this story about a dysfunctional family trying to survive. While she avoids leaning towards tragedy or misery, her work encapsulates in the tribulations of these women a variety of issues that include class tensions, the daily torment of the working class, the struggle against a patriarchal system, and the conflicts that arise from intergenerational relationships. Reconciliation, redemption, and personal discovery soak an authentic plot that transits between drama and comedy to explore Taipei’s contemporary society.
Report
Production Company
- Cinema Inutile
- Good Chaos
- Le Pacte
- Left-Handed Girl Film Productions
- Through the Lens Entertainment
Release Date Nov 14, 2025
Duration 1 h 48 m
Rating R
Genres
Awards
Golden Horse Film Festival
• 1 Win & 9 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Zurich Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
