Our Editor’s Choice: Top 5 Films at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival
Taiwan Film Festival- May 20
- 4 min read
With more than 200 films on offer, navigating this year’s Sydney Film Festival program can feel overwhelming. For seasoned cinephiles or those well-versed in international cinema, selecting titles might come naturally. But for others, the best approach may be to embrace the element of surprise. A Flexipass 10 or 20 allows audiences to pick films based on daily availability, encouraging spontaneous viewing and unexpected discoveries. Letting go of preconceptions and stepping outside one’s cinematic comfort zone is, after all, part of what makes the Sydney Film Festival a uniquely rewarding experience.
Focusing on Asian cinema and representation within the broader international lineup, here are our top five unmissable picks from this year’s festival.
The 2024 Golden Horse Film Festival Opening Film, STRANGER EYES, directed by Singaporean filmmaker YEO Siew Hua, will have its Australian premiere at this year’s Sydney Film Festival. The film features an outstanding creative team, including cinematographer Hideho Urata (Plan 75, 2022), editor Jean-Christophe Bouzy (Titane, 2021), and sound designer TU Duu-Chih (Yi Yi, 2000).
Six years after his acclaimed debut feature A Land Imagined (2018), Dir YEO returns with his long-awaited sophomore film. A bold four-nation co-production, STRANGER EYES earned a coveted spot in the Official Competition at the Venice Film Festival.
“In bustling Singapore, young couple Junyang (Wu Chien-ho) and Peiying (Anicca Panna) are despondent after the abduction of their child. Soon, they begin receiving DVDs with footage of their final moments with her, setting off a tense police investigation.” — Sydney Film Festival
STRANGER EYES masterfully blends diverse visual formats to evoke a surreal, unsettling atmosphere where the boundaries between reality and illusion dissolve. Through the parallel unravelling of two families, the film probes the fragile thresholds of intimacy and desire, searching for an ultimate escape.
Winner of Best Original Screenplay at the 2024 Golden Horse Awards, DAUGHTER’S DAUGHTER is the long-awaited sophomore feature from director Huang XI (Missing Johnny, 2017). Co-produced by Taiwanese cinema legends HOU Hsiao-Hsien and Sylvia Chang, the film features editing by LIAO Ching-Sung (Flowers of Shanghai, 1998) and Jerry Kao, with cinematography by YAO Hung-I (Long Day’s Journey into Night, 2018).
Sylvia Chang was recently honoured with the Golden Mulberry Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Far East Film Festival. Over her prolific career, she has distinguished herself as an actress, director, screenwriter, producer, and singer, appearing in over 100 films. Chang is renowned for her performances in classics such as Aces Go Places (1982) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), as well as for directing acclaimed works including Tempting Heart (1999), 20 30 40 (2004), and Love Education (2017).
“Told in a non-chronological structure, DAUGHTER’S DAUGHTER is an accomplished, intricate, and deeply affecting tapestry, anchored by an emotionally rich and fragile performance from Chang.” — Sydney Film Festival
ALWAYS (從來), directed by Chinese filmmaker Deming Chen, won the top DOX:Award at the 2025 Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX).
Set in a remote mountain village in northern Hunan, ALWAYS follows the remarkable journey of Youbin Gong, an exceptionally gifted child whose talent for poetry offers a poignant lens into his inner world. Guided by a compassionate teacher, Youbin and his classmates begin writing poetry that transcends their young age, capturing both the beauty and hardship of rural life. Through intimate observation over several years, Deming Chen crafts a tender coming-of-age portrait that explores childhood imagination, emotional resilience, and the quiet transformation that comes with growing up. Lyrical and visually striking, ALWAYS is a meditation on creativity, identity, and the fading innocence of youth.
“Directed by Deming Chen with the quiet grace of a master, every frame is a meditative work of art, evocative of the spirit of Tsai Ming-liang and Andrei Tarkovsky. This exquisitely intimate film will resonate long after it ends.” — Sydney Film Festival
MISTRESS DISPELLER (以愛之名), directed by Elizabeth Lo, won the NETPAC Award and Best Directing for Authors Under 40 at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
In contemporary China, a discreet and controversial industry has emerged—professionals known as “mistress dispellers” are hired to break up extramarital affairs and preserve marriages. This documentary offers rare and deeply intimate access to one such case, following Wang Zhenxi as she goes undercover to confront a husband’s infidelity. What unfolds is a gripping real-life drama that blurs the line between manipulation and healing. With a sensitive, observational lens, the film explores the emotional entanglements, cultural expectations, and quiet desperation that shape love, loyalty, and power in modern relationships.
“My aim was to craft a Rashōmon-inspired romance that empathetically portrayed all sides of a love triangle. In an era of increasing polarisation between the U.S. and China, it was important to me, as a Hong Kong citizen, to make a documentary that bridges this divide rather than alienates people and cultures. By investigating an experience that is both universally familiar and uniquely specific to contemporary China, I hope to ask what it means to hurt, to heal, to fear loneliness, and to love in the 21st century,” said director Elizabeth Lo.
Korean indie auteur HONG Sang-soo returns with his latest feature, WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU, told in his signature stripped-down style. When Donghwa, a drifting poet, joins his girlfriend Junhee on a visit to her family’s countryside home, what begins as a casual day trip gradually unfolds into a quiet study of strained dynamics and unspoken judgments. Hong crafts a deceptively simple yet formally playful work, where meaning lingers in pauses, glances, and offhand remarks.
“WHAT DOES THAT NATURE SAY TO YOU especially potent as a subtle exposé of character is its layered use of video form. Hong’s withdrawn gaze is interrupted by sudden movements, like pans across space and crash zooms into ongoing conversations.” – Variety
“Director Hong’s filmic studies of Korean manners and mores are always insightful, but this, his 33rd feature in 30 years, is especially illuminating and rich in charming humour.” – Sydney Film Festival
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