The Wedding Banquet

Join us in the cinema for the digital restoration of Ang Lee 李安’s groundbreaking queer classic — a bittersweet comedy about family, identity and the messiness of love.

Wai-Tung, a successful Taiwanese-American man, lives happily in New York with his partner Simon. But back in Taiwan, his traditional parents are still waiting for him to marry – preferably to a nice girl. In a bid to satisfy them, Wai-Tung stages a fake wedding with a woman in need of a green card. What follows is a charming and chaotic comedy of errors where dinner parties turn into confessionals, secrets unravel and the line between truth and performance blurs.

The Wedding Banquet was Ang Lee 李安’s breakout feature – a film that delicately balances humour, heartbreak and cultural tension. Before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain, Lee offered this tender portrait of queer life in diaspora, layered with intergenerational pressures and cross-cultural nuance. The film premiered at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear, and was nominated for both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. This digital restoration invites new audiences to experience its warmth, wit and quiet rebellion on the big screen.

Curated by the Chinese Independent Film Foundation.