Left-Handed Girl – Taiwan’s Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film  –  is a turning point for Taipei-born New York-based filmmaker, Shih-Ching Tsou. 

Taiwan’s Oscar submission, Left-Handed Girl, has opened doors Taipei-born New York-based writer, director and producer Shih-Ching Tsou “didn’t even know existed”. 

“Suddenly, I’m in conversations with producers and financiers who are genuinely interested in my voice,” Tsou told ContentAsia in a one-on-one interview between Hollywood’s AFI Film Festival in October and the Asian World Film Festival in November. Netflix released the film on 28 November.     

“People are approaching me with projects that centre on strong female characters, immigrant stories, or bold, intimate dramas,” she says. 

Tsou first drew international acclaim as the co-writer, co-director and co-producer (with Sean Baker, writer/director of Oscar winner Anora) of Take Out (2004), an award-winning debut that earned a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. She went on to produce Baker’s Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021) – all of which premiered at major festivals, including SXSW, Sundance, Cannes and Toronto, and earned numerous accolades, including multiple Academy Award nominations. Left-Handed Girl is the first feature she has directed on her own. 

Tsou is thrilled now to be invited into rooms as a director – “not as someone behind the scenes making things happen for others... It feels like the industry finally sees what I’ve been building for 20 years,” she says.

Left-Handed Girl is about a single mother (played by Janet Tsai) and her two daughters (played by Shih-yuan Ma and Nina Ye) who return to Taipei from the countryside to open a food stand at a bustling night market. 

Making the film was both “healing and liberating,” Tsou says. “The film comes from a wound I carried as a girl growing up in Taiwan; being told that using my left hand was ‘wrong,’ being asked to shrink myself to fit a mould, being treated differently simply because I was a girl. That experience isn’t just mine; it’s a collective memory many women recognise. In making this film, I wasn’t just telling my story. I was giving voice to a feeling so many of us were taught to swallow.”

Finding the money to start the production was Tsou’s biggest challenge.

“That was the real mountain. Left-Handed Girl lived inside me for more than 20 years, I kept waiting for the moment when someone would believe in it as much as I did. And in the end, I made it the way I’ve always made films – by sheer persistence, borrowing favours, and refusing to let the story die.”

Baker, who co-wrote, produced and edited the film, remains a strong influence in Tsou’s life.

“Working with Sean for over 20 years taught me something essential: stay focused, stay flexible and stay resilient. You fight for your vision one day at a time, and you never take ‘no’ as the final answer.”

Tsou describes her director’s style as a “sensibility that sits close to Dogme 95 and social-realist cinema, that raw immediacy, that refusal to prettify life.”

Being based in New York City strongly contributes to Tsou’s creativity. “Living in New York gives me a vérité edge as well, the freedom to be messy, alive, unpolished. I’ve always been drawn to emotional truth over cinematic gloss, and I think that comes from years of working in tiny crews, wearing many hats, doing every job I could. It taught me to chase honesty first.”

Tsou has also been influenced by shows like Succession and Fleabag. “They’re wildly different, but both are fearless in their own way – sharp, intimate, emotionally precise. They dig into the messy corners of human behaviour with honesty, and that kind of truthfulness always inspires me,” she says.

Tsou has already been approached by international investors who want to back her next project. “People are now coming to me because they connect with my voice and my story.”  

Asked what’s next, she says: “I want to do another feature, without question. That’s where my heart is. I’m drawn to stories that feel universal — films that can speak to audiences anywhere, no matter where they come from. I want to explore human experiences that linger: memory, desire and love that reshapes us quietly over time.

“I want to keep exploring intimate stories — about humanity, family, migration, and the quiet rebellions that define our lives. My next project may take place outside Taiwan, but it will carry the same spirit: finding light in the struggles of ordinary people,” she says.

Tsou doesn’t believe stories belong to one identity or nationality. “But I do think each of us brings a particular emotional language to the work. Being Taiwanese-American gives me a certain sensibility, the way I understand silence, family, guilt, tenderness, and contradiction.”

- By Susan Hornik

▶ Published in ContentAsia's December 2025 Magazine