The Hole

Faces of Tsai Ming-Liang Film Series

1998, 95 min., 35mm
In Mandarin with English subtitles

Days before the new millennium, Taipei is plagued by an endemic that causes the infected to behave like cockroaches. A few residents of an apartment complex have refused to evacuate. A man and a woman are connected by a hole between their apartments formed by an unending water leak. Occasional outbursts of fanciful and surreal musical numbers break the silence between them and reveal suppressed desires.

Cannes Film Festival – FIPRESCI Award
Chicago International Film Festival – Gold Hugo Best Film Award

"[A] daring combination of realism and apocalyptic vision, desperation and joy, austerity and glamour”—Karen Durbin, New York Times

Click here for complete information on the Faces of Tsai Ming-Liang film series (November 13-21), co-presented with the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York.

Part of the Citi Series on Asian Arts and Culture. This film series is funded, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts.