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Rarely do elements in any culture carry as much ridiculousness and potency as its traditional beliefs. This Taiwanese drama introduces us to I-Jing, a endearing five-year-old who has recently relocated back to Taipei with her mother and older sister. She gets direct personal experience when her grandfather admonishes her for using her left hand for everything – it’s not natural, he insists; the devil’s influence, he claims.

As I-Jing stares at her limb with dismay, a new relationship forms between her and her so-called sinister hand while she explores city life. Filmed completely with iPhones, debut solo director and screenwriter Shih-Ching Tsou, along with frequent collaborator Sean Baker, captures the dynamic vibe and sensory experience of Taipei. Vibrant crimson Chinese characters overtake the glass windows of a pawn shop; the pleasant melody of garbage trucks fills the air; the fluid exchange of Mandarin and Taiwanese between generations; lush trees against grimy buildings that nearly evoke the scent the specific essence of a vibrant, humid city. It’s not so much a love letter from a fan as it is a devotional to a place known by heart. Tsou pairs the kaleidoscopic fragments of the city with the splinters of imperfect people – tenderly showing what it means to be a family in Taiwan, and presenting a triumph of a film.

Family Relationships and Personal Struggles

The story, Taiwan’s entry for best international feature film at the Oscars, starts with I-Jing, her older sister, and her mom in a rebuild stage. Thoughtful mom Shu-Fen has established a night market noodles stand, and the unpredictable I-Ann has left high school and works at a betel nut stall, where she’s sleeping with her boss. I-Jing, played by the utterly delightful Nina Ye, begins a new school and, with the wonder only a child can have, tests out the potential of this newly labeled devil hand.

As she begins stealing trinkets at the night market with the cursed limb, separating a good hand that does what’s expected and the other that pursues what the heart desires, Tsou gracefully reflects each character’s own dualities. Here, the film portrays the complexities between what a person feels obligated to and what she genuinely desires: Shu-Fen can’t untangle herself from her trash ex-husband’s debts; I-Ann feels reduced to the role her mom wants her to play as she watches her peers move forward; I-Jing is told to be present but silent.

Cinematic Craft and Emotional Resonance

Tsou, along with Baker as editor and Ko-Chin Chen and Tzu-Hao Kao as cinematographers, skillfully lands us onto each family member’s separate planets, with many shots recording the lively and delightful rhythms of daily Taipei life. We’re at the same height with I-Jing as she makes her first theft, the excitement building with a camera shaky and beat abrupt. The camera pans overhead as I-Ann rides her scooter at night, city lights shimmering in the heat, bringing an expansive feeling of freedom with a pain that’s hers alone to feel.

A sense of duty is expertly integrated into each conundrum, as well as the loneliness that comes with it – it’s at once personal and saddening to see how duty is often a solitary experience. We see it when I-Jing tries in earnest to draw with her right hand, when I-Ann lays in bed after being scorned at an ex-classmate’s motel party. Meanwhile, Shu-Fen struggles to make rent, her own mom irritated she needs help yet again. “A married daughter’s like water that’s poured out,” says the grandma; a son would have still been her responsibility.

Lighter Moments and Character Portrayals

There are also moments of levity and playfulness, especially with the grandma’s bouts of anger, time with a meerkat that becomes I-Jing’s pet, and I-Jing’s general delight with the world. Ye, who is left-handed in real life, perfectly balances of an innocent child absorbing the financial realities and unfamiliar forces – Shu-Fen’s ex, the grandma’s hijinks, I-Ann and Shu-Fen’s bickering – that surround her. Ma’s I-Ann, too, is a considered portrait of an sharp teenager dealing with grief, making it feel like an inescapable but unaffordable emotion in an environment where everyone’s just trying to survive.

Climactic Scenes and Central Ideas

By the soap opera-like penultimate dinner scene, the clan has nurtured big secrets that lead to the ultimate Taiwanese diu lian (losing of face): getting humiliated in front of an audience. And the disclosures are powerful – by that point, it’s like discovering a juicy, painful secret about a close companion. Tsou and Baker’s script keenly examines what it really means to be shamed: which disgraces are noble, which are self-serving, and what should be passed from one generation to the next?

Some of these revelations are left unexcavated after the big showdown, and Left-Handed Girl may leave you wanting more – but perhaps also realizing that airing everything doesn’t mean resolution or a tidy adage immediately follows, or that there will be a sinister influence to blame. Instead, perhaps the city just wakes up to another day, and, a little lighter (having lost a little face), so do you.

• Release Information: The film is available in select cinemas on November 14 and on digital services from November 28.