A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

Original title

牯嶺街少年殺人事件

Directed by

Edward Yang

Genre

drama film

Country

Taiwan

Runtime

3h 57m

Rated

NR

Rating

8.2 of 10 from 393 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A teenage boy in 1960s Taiwan gets involved with a street gang and falls into trouble. The story follows his slow drift away from his family and into a violent world of young love and rivalry.

slow-burnmelancholictensenostalgicbittersweetatmosphericreflectivegritty

What happens

A Brighter Summer Day is a 1991 Taiwanese epic crime drama film directed by Edward Yang, associated with the New Taiwanese Cinema. Its English title is derived from the lyrics of Elvis Presley's 1960 rendition of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?". Set in the late 1950s and early '60s, the film centers on Hsiao Si’r (Chang Chen), a boy from a middle-class home who veers into juvenile delinquency. The film was selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 64th Academy Awards but was not nominated. Since its release, A Brighter Summer Day has been praised as one of Yang's best works, one of the best films of the 1990s, of the 20th century and one of the greatest films of all time. It ranked 78th in the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, one of four Chinese-language films to be included, and above Yang's Yi Yi. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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