A boy’s devotion to his uncle, a man with an intellectual disability, curdles into shame as he grows up and away from home in “Uncle,” the first feature written and directed by Taiwan’s Yen Hao-hsuan.
The project is part of the Asian Project Market, which runs within the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM).
As Taiwan races toward the new millennium, its hunger for progress propels the boy forward, Yen says, while the uncle never gets that option. “I hope the film makes us think about who we leave behind, and what we fail to recognize when progress becomes the measure of a person’s worth.”
Yen also wants audiences to meet A-Tsik, and people like him, as equals. “He is loving, funny, stubborn and difficult. He has sexual desires, falls in love, makes mistakes and can hurt people,” he says. “Society labels my uncle ‘abnormal.’ I am not trying to make him ‘normal’; I just hope this film could make the gap between those two words a little smaller.”
The film is produced by Patrick Mao Huang, who founded Flash Forward Entertainment, and Sung Chin-hsuan, with Flash Forward, wpd films and Soseki Studio presenting. Huang’s credits include “Tiger Stripes,” which won the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize in 2023, and “Deep Quiet Room.” Sung’s work spans film, series and immersive media, including 2025 Venice Immersive Grand Prize winner “The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up.”
“Uncle” is in development and financing, backed by a Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) development grant, and was developed in the New Director Workshop held this year by the Taipei Film Festival. Yen is now writing a fresh draft and working out the film’s visual style. The project has also been picked for the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market.
In Busan, where the project is making its first Asian market outing, the producers are courting co-production partners from Korea, Japan, elsewhere in Asia and Europe, along with financiers, post-production collaborators, sales agents and distributors. Huang wants a financing and creative setup that safeguards Yen’s voice and the film’s Taiwanese character.
Yen’s 2024 short “Caged Dog” earned a Golden Horse Awards nomination in the live action short category, and his first short, 2022’s “On Another’s Sorrow,” bowed at the Golden Horse festival. He is finishing his third short, “Accident,” now in post-production, and is toying with a possible second feature or series about Taiwan’s democratization.
