Left-Handed Girl

A single mother, Shu-Fen moves with her two daughters—innocent 5-year-old I-Jing and surly, university-aged I-Ann—to Taipei to start a noodle stand at a night market, while I-Ann works at a betel nut stand as a betel nut beauty to earn money. After discovering that her estranged husband (who abandoned the family a decade earlier) is terminally ill, Shu-Fen puts herself further into debt to pay for his medical bills and funeral, which disgusts I-Ann and drives a further wedge between mother and daughter as Shu-Fen becomes unable to pay rent for the noodle stand. Meanwhile, reuniting with her grandparents Wen-Xong Chen and Xue-Mei Wu, the left-handed I-Jing is informed by her old-fashioned grandfather that the left hand is "the devil's hand" and that she is forbidden from using it in his home. Misinterpreting the superstition, I-Jing believes that she is not responsible for any bad behavior done using her left hand, and begins to shoplift from the other market stands.

When I-Ann is invited to a party at a motel with an old local classmate, it is revealed that she had been a straight-A student and the most popular girl on campus, but had to drop out of high school for reasons I-Ann claims were financial. After others at the party mock her with crude sexual advances, she storms out. I-Ann is also in a sexual relationship with her boss, A-Ming, whose wife eventually discovers the relationship and confronts I-Ann at work. I-Ann reveals she is pregnant with A-Ming's baby and quits.

I-Jing, while playing with the pet meerkat willed to the family by Shu-Fen's deceased husband, throws a ball with her left hand, leading to the meerkat falling off the apartment balcony and dying. Distressed and guilty, I-Jing blames "the devil's hand." Later, Shu-Fen visits her mother's home to beg for money, but Xue-Mei refuses. Xue-Mei is secretly involved in a black-market illegal-immigration operation, and I-Jing, oblivious to the crimes but aware that the passports are valuable, steals them from Xue-Mei's home as the women argue, inadvertently saving Xue-Mei from a later raid by immigration agents. When I-Jing attempts to pawn the passports, the shop owner contacts the family home, and I-Ann collects her and learns of I-Jing's belief in her "devil hand" and shoplifting. I-Ann convinces I-Jing that the superstition is false, assures that the meerkat's death was an accident, and takes I-Jing to return the stolen items and atone. As thanks for I-Jing's actions involving the passports, Xue-Mei gifts Shu-Fen the money to pay for the noodle stand.

The family attends a birthday banquet for Xue-Mei's sixtieth birthday. A-Ming, who has been attempting to contact I-Ann without success, arrives with his wife after deducing her location, and his wife loudly reveals I-Ann's affair and pregnancy in front of the scandalized extended family, insisting that they will pay for the baby if it is a male. I-Ann retorts that she aborted the child, leading to a fight with Shu-Fen, who is ashamed of I-Ann's behavior and failure to take responsibility. The couple is thrown out, but I-Ann drinks heavily, and eventually reveals their family secret: I-Jing is her own daughter, not Shu-Fen's, and Shu-Fen had covered up the truth in order to give her daughter a better chance at marital prospects. Xue-Mei is outraged, but the moment is cathartic for Shu-Fen and I-Ann.

The film ends with I-Ann choosing to work at the noodle stand with her family, and she and I-Jing beginning a foundation of their relationship as mother and daughter.

• Janel Tsai as Shu-Fen
• Ma Shih-Yuan as I-Ann
• Nina Ye as I-Jing
• Brando Huang as Johnny
• Akio Chen as Wen-Xong Chen
• Xin-Yan Chao as Xue-Mei Wu
• Teng-Hung Hsia as A-Ming

The script for the film was written by Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker in 2010.^[4] In November 2012, Baker revealed the project, with Shih-Ching Tsou set to direct, however, the film was facing difficulty to secure financing.^[5]

Principal photography began in July 2022.^[6] By February 2025, the film was nearing the end of post-production.^[7] The film was shot using an iPhone.^[8]

Left-Handed Girl had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Critics' Week section where it won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution.^[9][10] In May 2025, Netflix acquired rights to the film for the world excluding the Baltics, the Benelux, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, France, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Scandinavia, Poland and Taiwan.^[11] It also screened in the Competition section of the 30th Busan International Film Festival on September 22, 2025 for 'Bosan Awards',^[12] the 'Official Section' of the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival,^[13] the 69th BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2025,^[14] and the 20th Rome Film Festival,^[15] where it won Best Film.^[16]

It was released in the United States in a limited release on November 14, 2025, before it began streaming on Netflix on November 28, 2025.^[17]

In August 2025, Taiwan's Ministry of Culture submitted Left-Handed Girl to compete for the Academy Award for Best International Feature category at the 98th Academy Awards.^[18]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 96 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A warm tour through Taipei distinguished by its lived-in cultural specificity and relatable family dynamics, Left-Handed Girl is a winning first solo feature from writer-director Shih-Ching Tsou."^[19] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[20]

• List of submissions to the 98th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film
• List of Taiwanese submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film