Day Off

Audience Award, 2023 Osaka Asian Film Festival
Best Actress, 2023 Taipei Film Awards
Best Screenplay, 2023 Udine Far East Film Festival

Ma runs her own barber shop. It’s what she has spent 40 years building and perfecting, and it’s what saw her through her husband’s death and raising three children from infancy to leaving the nest. The adult children roll their eyes at their mom’s old fashioned habits like calling long-time customers on a landline or growing plants on the roof when solar panels would save her so much money. They’re especially dismissive when she proposes taking a day off to visit an old client miles away. But nothing will stand in the way of a determined pro, a headstrong mother, and the simple obligations of kindness that never go out of date.

Perfectly cast in the lead role is ‘80s vixen Lu Hsiao-fen, who commands the screen with no-nonsense determination, and who, if you look beyond her anonymous trade, beholds an inner superstar. An earnest, heartwarming drama of family, DAY OFF is a tribute to the Taiwanese countryside and the people met along the way.

– Neha Pearce