London Film Festival 2025 – Left-Handed Girl ★★★★

Released: 14 November 2025

Director: Shih-Ching Tsou

Starring: Janel Tsai, Shih-Yuan Ma, Nina Ye

Taiwanese-American filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou may be relatively unknown to wider audiences but she has been a frequent collaborator of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sean Baker. After co-directing, writing and producing the 2004 film Take Out, they later worked together on several of Baker’s directorial features, including Tangerine and The Florida Project. Now, four years after their last collaboration (2021’s Red Rocket), Baker is returning the favour by producing Tsou’s debut directorial feature.

Set in Taipei, Left-Handed Girl follows a family – single mum Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai) and her daughters, rebellious teenager I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and youngster I-Jing (Nina Ye) – as they move to Taipei to be nearer to Shu-Fen’s parents. As each character struggles to adjust to big city life, their strength as a family becomes increasingly tested.

Tsou’s Taiwanese project echoes the filmmaker’s memories in Taipei, the capital city of a country dominated by patriarchal values and social structure. This creates a double standard that deeply affects the film’s female characters: I-Jing’s superstitious grandfather (Akio Chen) stops her from using her dominant left hand, calling it ‘The Devil’s Hand’, but no-one really stops him from scorning a five-year-old girl. Meanwhile, Shu-Fen’s younger brother is favoured over her and her sisters by their mum, brewing an evident sense of resentment. Painting a seemingly bleak picture which comes to a head during an eventful birthday party full of harsh truths, but with three strong and impressionable characters (Shu-Fen and her daughters) at its heart, Tsou’s narrative provides a foundation for empowerment.

With a lightly comical and touching screenplay, the feminist-driven narrative shows each character – Shu-Fen, I-Ann and I-Jing – find their own way in a new home while focusing on the mother-daughter relationship. Shu-Fen works nights in a noodle stand in a busy night market while school dropout I-Ann works as a betel nut beauty, who tend to be young, provocatively-dressed women selling betel nuts. With both of the older characters trying to keep a roof over their heads, they increasingly neglect I-Jing, a five-year-old often left on her own either roaming the market or getting into mischief. The lack of maternal guidance or amicable rapport among the characters sees Tsou test the family dynamic, displaying varying levels of confidence and individuality that makes their story even more endearing. 

This is elevated with the choice to film various sequences at a lower level, creating a visual perspective that sees Taipei through I-Jing’s eyes. This vantage point allows the youngster to take in the brightly lit night market to the vast cityscape with a wide-eyed innocence, creating her own journey of life in the city. Furthermore, the visuals heighten the impact of each interaction she has – adults who don’t have time for her talk down to her while those showing compassion such as I-Ann and market trader Johnny (Teng-Hui Huang) speak to her at eye-contact. It is a subtle approach but one that nonetheless reminds audiences of the little girl at the heart of Tsou’s film.

Although the casting is also consistent with Baker’s approach of using performers either new or familiar with acting, Tsou’s choice of stars raises Left-Handed Girl to another level. Taiwanese actress Janel Tsai delivers a nuanced performance as an overwhelmed mother struggling to make ends meet yet is controlled during tense moments. However, the film is stolen by its young stars Shih-Yuan Ma and Nina Ye, who are reminiscent of The Florida Project’s Bria Vinaite and Brooklynn Prince – despite their lack of acting experience and age, respectively, their tender performances show a maturity and confidence in portraying emotionally complex characters, especially when they are on-screen together.

For a film that may have taken nearly 20 years to reach the big screen, Tsou’s labour of love is a captivating piece of work. A showcase of girl power in front of and behind the camera, Left-Handed Girl is a heartfelt and inspiring tale amid a flurry of colour.