Dust

Official Selection, 2026 Venice Film Festival
Official Selection, 2026 Busan International Film Festival

The 11th entry in Tsai Ming-liang’s Walker series, DUST sees the Walker (Lee Kang-sheng) move ever so slowly through the Basque region in Spain.

What’s more punk than punk? Donning monk robes and barely moving at a punk show. Perhaps even more so is the Walker at complete rest, lying on a saucer swing in a park. In San Sebastián, among all the public art, Lee is a near sculpture. Not only do we get to take in every sensual detail of each scene, it is also a delight to see characters unexpectedly reappear—including a farmer in his 80s with an incredible face and members of the crew. They may be watching the Walker, or perhaps the Walker is watching them.

The title comes from the Diamond Sutra, which speaks of dust in one chapter. As humans, like dust particles, we are but specks in the universe—not quite fixed in place, impermanent. As Tsai says in an interview, “It’s very hard to have a person only belong to a certain space.” Most of us travel in some sense, like Anong Houngheuangsy, who appears in other Tsai films. In this one, according to Tsai, “…he has almost become another Walker.”

As with other films in the series, Tsai both punctuates and blurs the line between performance art and real life, fiction and documentary, stillness and bustle. Together with NIGHT JOURNEY (also screened at SDAFF this year), Tsai continues to reinvent the Walker series, not just by integrating new locations, but also the people and faces who become more than just passersby.

– Wilda Wong