I Blew Out the Candles Before Making a Wish

Official Selection, 2026 Taipei Film Festival
Official Selection, 2026 Udine Far East Film Festival

Under the shadows of Macau’s urban high rises and gilded casinos, JoJo, a crafty young girl peddling mishmash wares with her grandmother, stumbles on a miracle: dead chips. Glossy, ruby red, and worth a million. The problem is she’s too young to gamble herself. And her religious grandma (Elaine Jin) would rather turn in the chips than play them, even though they are their only chance of paying off her runaway father’s staggering debt. So she turns to Hua, their debt collector.

A pitiful man, fortune only stays in Hua’s hands long enough for him to lose it all. With luck switching hands from good breaks to increasingly bad, JoJo (Mui Cheng-In) and Hua (Kai Ko) must bet on a grand final scheme to keep the house from winning.

Directed by Chao Koi-Wang and Hu Chin-Yen, I BLEW OUT THE CANDLES BEFORE MAKING A WISH swaps out the high-energy and glitzy suspense of classic casino movies for the fragile hopes of ordinary people living amidst sprawling concrete and patchwork homes where stars are merely the city’s false promises taunting overhead. In this comforting family drama and raucous comedy-adventure, high stakes are always undercut by a tenacious softness hiding under the rubble, a reminder that in states of selfishness, there’s a miracle in warm hands that find your own.

– Dana Del Castillo

Preceded By

Lethe

Directed by Liang-Hsin Huang

After his death, a sculptor with Alzheimer’s goes on a self-healing voyage on the river Lethe as he seeks memories of himself and his daughter.