Growing Up

Chen Kun-hou's Golden Horse Award-winning drama follows a boy from childhood into adolescence as his family and postwar Taiwan change around him.

Xiao Bi lives with his young mother and new stepfather in post-war Taiwan, a society changing around him as fast as he is.

From childhood into adolescence, Xiao Bi pushes back against the world at home and beyond. As youthful rebellion collides with family tensions and the everyday pressures of working- and middle-class life, he edges closer to the young man he will become.

Curator's note
Honest, grounded and alive to the small moments of everyday life, Chen Kun-hou's Growing Up (1983) brought the Taiwan New Wave to a mass audience. Its naturalistic eye for ordinary people helped launch a movement.

With a screenplay by Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chu T’ien-wen, and an early turn from a young Niu Cheng-tse, the film set the stage for a generation of filmmakers who would transform Asian cinema over the decade that followed.

Growing Up won Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay at the Golden Horse Awards.

Selected by the Chinese Independent Film Foundation