BANGKOK — The 8th Taiwan Documentary and Film Festival in Thailand 2026 has opened at House Samyan, bringing together film lovers, critics, actors, filmmakers and industry figures for five days of Taiwanese cinema.
The festival, which runs from July 22-26, 2026, at House Samyan, Century Sukhumvit in Bangkok, and Pratudang Space in Khon Kaen, features 17 films and documentaries spanning classics, contemporary fiction and short films.
At the festival’s opening ceremony, Pete Lan, representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand, welcomed guests and thanked audiences for showing their appreciation for Taiwanese cinema.
Lan said the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office and Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture have worked closely with Thailand Documentary Club and other partners for the past eight years to organise the festival and strengthen cultural exchange between Taiwan and Thailand.
He said this year’s festival centres on the theme of “family matters,” which is why, for the first time in the festival’s history, all three films in Ang Lee’s acclaimed “Father Knows Best” trilogy are being presented together.
Which Lan said remind him of a Thai saying that “those who have no music in their heart are truly strange and peculiar,” he said viewers might reach a similar conclusion after watching the films, that families without empathy, compassion, respect and love are “truly strange and peculiar.”
“If you watch those movies, you understand that if somebody claims to be your family member but knows only pressure, coercion and threats as a means to communicate with you, that’s not family,” he said.
“Family members need to know empathy, compassion, respect and love.”
He then stopped short of offering further interpretation, saying audiences had the right to form their own opinions. “After all, we are in a democracy, right? So enjoy your movie tonight,” he said.
The festival also features Girl (2025), the directorial debut of Taiwanese actress Shu Qi.
The 2026 programme is divided into several categories:
Documentaries
- SPI
- LA PALOMA
- A Long Way Home
- Back Home
Classics
- Pushing Hands
- The Wedding Banquet
- Eat Drink Man Woman
- Kuei-Mei, a Woman
Fiction
- The Wave Will Carry Us
- Girl
Short film programmes
New Taipei City Documentary Film Award
- Where the Sea Breeze Blows
- We Live Underground
- The Sparkle in Our Lives
From City to Cloud
- Amateur in the Moon
- Jouhatsu Letters
- Paper Houses and Horses
- Where Clouds Once Formed
One of the festival’s biggest highlights is Eat Drink Man Woman (飲食男女), Ang Lee’s 1994 classic and the closing chapter of his acclaimed “Father Knows Best” trilogy.
The film earned Lee his second consecutive Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, following The Wedding Banquet (1993). It came just before his international breakthrough, which saw him move into Hollywood and direct acclaimed films including Sense and Sensibility (1995), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012).
At the heart of the film is Chef Chu, a master chef whose sense of taste is slowly fading, and his three very different daughters. Every Sunday, he prepares an elaborate feast to bring the family together around the dinner table. Yet behind the beautifully presented dishes are unspoken feelings, hidden secrets and life-changing decisions that gradually come to the surface.
The three daughters each represent a different generation and approach to life. Jia-Jen, the eldest, is a devout Christian chemistry teacher who has resigned herself to a life without marriage so she can look after her father, until an unexpected romance turns her carefully ordered world upside down.
Jia-Chien, the second daughter, is a fiercely independent career woman determined to build a life of her own. She is also the only daughter to truly inherit her father’s passion and talent for cooking. Jia-Chien is ambitious, sharp and confident, but just as stubborn as the father she seems determined to leave behind.
The youngest, Jia-Ning, works at a fast-food restaurant and initially appears to be the most ordinary of the three. Yet she is the first to deliver news that completely changes the dynamics of the family.
What makes Eat Drink Man Woman so enduring is the way it balances sharp comedy, family drama and genuine emotion. The dinner table becomes the film’s central stage, where love, resentment, loneliness and long-held secrets are expressed, often without anyone saying exactly what they mean.
And then there is the food. The film opens with an unforgettable culinary sequence, turning the preparation of a lavish Sunday meal into a visual feast of chopping, slicing, boiling, frying and meticulous cooking. It is enough to make audiences hungry before the story has even begun.
For fans of Ang Lee, the festival offers a rare chance to see the complete “Father Knows Best” trilogy on the big screen, with Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) all included in this year’s programme.
