About

The Boys from Fengkuei will screen from a 4K digital restoration.

A group of teenage boys leave their humdrum lives in the fishing village of Fengkuei to move to the bustling city of Kaohsiung. Living in an apartment they find through one of their relatives, they are soon torn by their desire to be away from their quiet hometown and the toughness required to exist in the big city.

The Boys from Fengkuei is an early work from renowned Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien. A warm-hearted and honest coming of age story, it is a key entry in the Taiwanese New Wave. With swarms of scooters and motorbikes pouring off ferries and milling around the city, it is a film that offers an insight into the utilitarian usage of motorcycles as a quotidian vehicle. Omnipresent but rarely highlighted, they act as the lifeblood of a buzzing modern metropolis.

The film has been restored in 4K by the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique in collaboration with Hou Hsiao-hsien and The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project.