The Asian Film Festival Rome is one of Italy’s leading events dedicated to contemporary Asian cinema. It takes place every year in Rome and, this year, runs from April 7 to April 15. The festival presents a selection that spans Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, alternating between European premieres, competitions, and retrospectives. The opening is often entrusted to a film of strong impact, though not necessarily mainstream, favoring auteur works or titles already recognized in major Asian festivals.
The opening takes shape with Girl, a Taiwanese film written and directed by Shu Qi. From the very first moments, it is clear that this is not a neutral choice, but a deliberate statement. The direction is essential, almost restrained, built more on absence than explanation. Within this space, a raw and concrete narrative emerges, never softened. The story does not seek emotional shortcuts, does not simplify, does not protect: it exposes.
It exposes bodies, silences, fragilities.
It exposes a reality that does not need amplification, because it is already enough as it is.
The tone is direct, at times harsh, yet always controlled. There is no indulgence in pain, but a precise choice to present it in its most authentic form, without aestheticizing it. This is where the film finds its strength: in a realism that is not only visual, but emotional. Each scene seems to subtract rather than add; each passage removes the superfluous until only what truly matters remains. In this subtle balance between rigor and sensitivity, a solid and conscious authorial vision emerges, capable of building a narrative that does not simply pass before the eyes, but lingers.
Choosing Girl as the opening film means taking a clear position: not offering an easy entry, but a necessary one.
Emotional, raw, almost indifferent in its fidelity to reality, Girl by Shu Qi takes the gaze back to 1988, to a time when social structures allowed no margins and the condition of women was still trapped within a rigid, suffocating patriarchy that offered no alternatives, only resistance.
There is no nostalgia—only exposure.
At the center, a mother.
Not idealized, not softened. Harsh, essential, at times even ruthless in the way she looks at her eldest daughter. But that harshness is not distance: it is survival. It is the only language she knows to prepare her for a world that does not forgive. And then there is a decisive act: separating her from herself. An act that carries nothing romantic, but everything necessary—like pulling someone out of a place with no escape, like dragging her out of a depth that does not allow breathing. Not out of declared love, but to prevent that same life from repeating itself, unchanged, without deviation.
Alongside her, the figure of the father.
Violent, absent even when present, consumed by alcohol. A presence that does not build, but dismantles. And within this space, Hsiao-lee grows.
The only ray of light comes through Li-li.
She is not a saving presence, she does not change things, but she shifts them slightly. She is a breath—brief, but necessary. With her, Hsiao-lee does not have to defend herself, does not have to anticipate fear. She can exist without tension, even if only for a few moments. Li-li becomes something more than a friend: she is a projection, an inner space taking shape outside.
Where the mother restrains, she lets go.
Where the mother hardens, she softens.
She does not erase pain, but redirects it. She does not resolve it, but makes it possible to endure.
In this sense, Li-li seems to move like a reflection of Hsiao-lee’s unconscious: she absorbs what cannot be spoken, translates what has not yet found a language. She is the point where pressure eases, even if only for a moment—yet she remains fragile.
And it is in the ending that the key to the mother’s harshness is revealed. I will not say more, because this is a film that deserves to be seen and understood.
