A Masterful Portrait of 1950s Taipei | Why You Need to See “A Foggy Tale”

The state executes your brother, then bills you for the bullets.

Set in Taiwan in the early 1950s, during the White Terror, the film A Foggy Tale follows a teenage girl as she travels north to reclaim her brother’s remains. The premise is stark, but the story is  told with tenderness, quiet humor, and  a sustained political dread that never needs to announce itself.

In that era families often left bodies unclaimed. To step forward was to risk being marked as kin to a dissident. And the protagonist’s decision to reclaim her brother anyway is a stubborn act of love that reads as resistance because the system has priced grief out of reach.

On her journey, she falls in with a demobilized mainland soldier who now pulls a rickshaw. The two form an unlikely partnership as they try to raise the money and navigate a city thick with fear, informers, and petty hustlers.

This is hopepunk filmmaking: It frames the simple act of caring for another person as a radical subversion of a system designed to isolate us. The film earns its warmth honestly, through characterization rather than sentimentality. Caitlin Fang shows us  a compelling mix of stubbornness, naivety, and quiet resolve, and Will Or brings both real humor and real texture to Zhao Gongdao’s transformation from reluctant helper to genuine friend. The production design is amazing — crowded Taipei streets and public spaces reconstructed with unmistakable craft on what was clearly a modest budget.

A  Foggy Tale works both as a humorous and thrilling coming‑of‑age story and a meditation on historical trauma. It is in limited US release now, and worth going out of your way to find