“It was a crisis moment for all of us, and not just me.” That is how writer-director Fiona Roan Feng-i (阮鳳儀) remembers 2003, when she was uprooted from the US as a 13-year-old after her mother was diagnosed with cancer and brought back to Taiwan, where she had lived as a young child.
It was a turbulent time in Roan’s life, but one that would later shape her debut feature film American Girl, (美國女孩) which earned her the Best New Director award at the Golden Horse Awards.
The film went on to gross more than NT$10 million (US$356,875) at the box office