Shot in beautiful 35mm film, Chinese American writer-director Constance Tsang’s luminous debut feature is a delicate, atmospheric melodrama set in Flushing, Queens NYC. Amy (Ke-Xi Wu) and Didi (Haipeng Xu), two Chinese migrants, work in a small parlour salon. Uprooted and far from their loved ones, their deep sisterhood helps them survive the temporal and emotional toll their work demands in a strange land. Didi has a secret lover, Cheung (Lee Kang-Sheng, actor of the great Tsai Ming-Liang), but when violence intrudes everything falls apart, and Amy finds herself alone, forced to consider her own destiny. Intimately filmed in her home neighbourhood, Constance Tsang brings poignancy to the state of contemporary exile, with airy, unobtrusive camera movement and long takes translating loneliness and grief.

Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard, EAFFI Discoveries

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Constance Tsang, hosted by film-maker Maríssa Aroy.

Maríssa Aroy is an Emmy award-winning director known for her impactful documentaries, including the celebrated PBS program Sikhs in America. Her work also earned her an Emmy nomination for The Delano Manongs, highlighting the pivotal yet overlooked contributions of Filipinos in the U.S. labor movement. A Fulbright Scholar, Aroy was awarded the inaugural Hatsuye Yamasaki Award for Visionary Leadership by the College of William and Mary. Her career also encompasses educational roles, having taught at Trinity College Dublin, Berkeley City College in California and The New School in New York. Recently expanding into narrative drama, Aroy continues to push boundaries in storytelling. She resides in Wicklow Town.