Director Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) has finally given approval for his film Stray Dogs (郊遊) to be shown in local movie theaters, more than four months after it became a hit at the Venice Film Festival.
There will be 50 screenings of the award-winning movie in Taipei, Greater Taichung and Greater Kaohsiung from Feb. 21 to March 2, the film’s distributor, Atom Cinema Co, said.
These will be the only cinema screenings of the film in Taiwan, the company said.
After that, the movie will be shown only in museums, it said.
After years of struggle to make a breakthrough at the box office, the Taiwan-based Malaysian director last year decided to try a new approach, working with museums and art galleries to screen his films instead of relying solely on movie theaters.
Tsai, who has refused to make commercial films, has long expressed frustration over popular tastes in film.
Stray Dogs is about a homeless single father struggling to survive with his two children in Taipei.
The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 70th Venice Film Festival in September last year and earned Tsai the best director prize at the Golden Horse Awards in November last year.
The film’s lead actor, Lee Kang-sheng (李康生), won best actor at the Golden Horse Awards and at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival for his role as the single father who tries to earn a living by holding up advertisement signs on the streets for a real-estate development company.
Tickets for the theater showings of the movie are now available at tickets.books.com.tw.
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