Hidden Gems

DAUGHTER OF THE NILE
NI LUO HE NU ER

• Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien
• TAIWAN / 1987 / DCP / Colour / 91´ / Mandarin; Turkish, English s.t.

• Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen
• Director of Photography: Chen Huai-en
• Editing: Ching-Song Liao
• Music: Chang Hung-yi, Cih-Yuan Ch'en
• Cast: Jack Kao, Tianlu Li, Fu Sheng Tsui, Fan Yang, Lin Yang
• Producer: Wen-jen Lu
• Production Co.: Fu-Film
• World Sales: Taiwan Film Institute

Up until its digital restoration last year, Daughter of the Nile was one of the most overlooked works in Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s filmography. One of the most prominent directors of our times, the Golden Tulip-winner Hou Hsiao-Hsien traces the marginalised, alienated urban youth as he often does in his other films and gives the first signs of the naturalistic style he perfected in A City of Sadness; Millennium Mambo; Goodbye South, Goodbye. Daughter of the Nile heralds a new talent who goes through the door opened by masters such as Ozu and Bresson and will eventually develop a cinematic language of his own. This is one of the key films of Hou, selected as one of the most significant directors of the ‘90s in surveys by The Village Voice and Film Comment.

This film was a Meetings on the Bridge participant.