Yen and Ai-Lee

Kim Jiseok Award, 2024 Busan International Film Festival
Best International Feature, 2025 Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Yen is back home after serving eight years in prison for killing her abusive father. She and her mom take Yen’s reintroduction to the village a day at a time, sifting through job listings and re-encountering old classmates. But Yen’s introduction to mom’s new lover and to a half-brother she’s never met upends her homecoming and thrusts Yen back under the unshakable shadows of her father.

Those shadows and others dwell in the black-and-white mysteries of YEN AND AI-LEE, directed with signature emotional precision by Tom Shu-yu Lin (Starry Starry Night, SDAFF ’12, Zinnia Flower, SDAFF ’15). Featuring an award-winning performance by Taiwanese legend Yang Kuei-mei and a startling dramatic turn by comedy queen Kimi Hsia, Lin’s latest is an enigmatic film of uncanny doubles and a narrative puzzle of women re-defining themselves within cycles of violence and disappearance.