Left-Handed Girl

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Tsou Shih-ching directs. Chen Ko-chin behind the camera. Sean Baker cuts. Produced in France, United States of America, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Singapore. Dialogue in Mandarin.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

• 1Released last year.
• 2International production across 5 countries: France, United States of America, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Singapore.
• 3Directed by Tsou Shih-ching, shot by Chen Ko-chin. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
• 4Editor Sean Baker shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
• 5Ma Shih-yuan and Janel Tsai and Nina Ye carry the top of the cast.
• 6IMDB entry: tt27722618 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
• 7Classified under 11 themes, including "infidelity", "dysfunctional family", "single mother", "meerkat".

The technical file

Cinematography

Chen Ko-chin

Editing

Sean Baker

Costume design

Hsu Chiao-ying

Sound

Samuel Nacach

Runtime

109 min · 1h 49m

Status

Released

Original language

ZH

Certification (US)

R

IMDB

Left-Handed Girl (2025) ↗

Rotten Tomatoes

98% 🍅 Fresh

Metacritic

77/100

IMDB rating

7.3/10 · 10,045 votes

MPAA

R

Also by

Tsou Shih-ching

• 
  Take Out

  2008 · ★ 7.0

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

• 

  ▶
  Scene Breakdown with Filmmakers Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker, Nina Ye, & Shih-Yuan

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  Sean Baker & Shih-Ching Tsou Collaborative History

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  Shot by Shot with Shih-Ching Tsou & Nina Ye

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  Shot by Shot - Apology Tour

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  A Conversation with Shih-Ching Tsou

  Featurette · Official
• 

  ▶
  The Cast Eats Taiwanese Food

  Featurette · Official

Community reviews

What people are saying

• Brent Marchant2026-01-02
  ★ 5/10

  Fewer moviegoing experiences are more exasperating than comedies (or comedy-dramas) that try too hard but invariably fall flat. These insipid, allegedly zany offerings try viewer patience with their listless narratives, lack of substance and even greater absence of laughs. But, unfortunately, that’s precisely what dooms this second feature outing from writer-director-producer Shih-Ching Tsou. The film follows the lives of a single mother, Shu-Fen (Janel Tsai), and her two daughters, I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and I-Jing (Nina Ye), who relocate (from where it’s never made especially clear) to Taipei (where they already seem to have a surprisingly established support network) to open a street food eatery in a stall at a popular city night market. Together and separately, they struggle to adapt to their new circumstances with supposedly funny, touching and occasionally dramatic outcomes. However, the follow-through on fulfilling these objectives is weak at best, most likely attributable to a narrative that tries to incorporate far too many story threads, most of which are severely underdeveloped. The result is a picture that comes across like a strung-together collection of episodes hoping to combine to make for a cohesive story, an effort that yields an epic failure, to be sure. Even the premise providing the film with its title – the adventures of a young, left-handed girl – is woefully thin, not much to build upon in drumming up a viable and engaging story. The fault here lies with an anemic script co-authored by the filmmaker and her frequent collaborator, writer-director Sean Baker, who captured four Oscars for his 2024 release “Anora,” including honors for best original screenplay, a proficiency that clearly hasn’t transferred over in this release (not that it was even readily present in its predecessor for that matter). Except for one segment near the film’s end, “Left-Handed Girl” largely lacks the edge found in many of Baker’s previous works, frequently soft-pedaling its material here to the point of almost becoming innocuous, playing like a namby-pamby family comedy with a few risqué bits thrown in to entertain the adults in the audience. What’s most annoying, though, is the performance by relative newcomer Ye, who constantly mugs for the camera and whose saccharin-encrusted performance becomes increasingly cloying with each passing frame. Yet, despite the many foregoing issues, the film has nevertheless amassed considerable recognition thus far, including two Critics Choice Award nominations, a nomination and win at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and a designation as one of 2025’s Top International Films by the National Board of Review, among numerous additional honors by critics’ organizations and other film festivals. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I honestly don’t understand the hype and support this production has garnered. I expect more out of offerings like this and from the parties involved in this project. In this case, I guess that can be chalked up to more than just the girl being left-handed.

  Read full review ↓

Production companies

Who made it

• LH

  LHG Films

  GB

• 

  Le Pacte

  FR

• 

  Cinema Inutile

  US

• 

  Filmic

  US

• 

  Through the Lens Entertainment

  SG

• 

  Good Chaos

  GB

• LE

  Left-Handed Girl Film Productions

  TW

Key crew

• GafferWei Hu-hsuan
• EditorSean Baker
• ProducerSean Baker
• Executive ProducerAdi Chand
• Executive ProducerAlex C. Lo
• ProducerTsou Shih-ching
• ProducerMike Goodridge
• ProducerAlice Labadie
• ProducerJean Labadie
• Executive ProducerJennifer Jao
• Sound DesignerSamuel Nacach
• Sound Re-Recording MixerJoe Dzuban
• Sound Re-Recording MixerJason Gaya
• Supervising Sound EditorSam Fan
• Sound Effects EditorXiaodan Li
• Costume DesignHsu Chiao-ying
• GafferOnion Yu
• ColoristBen Chan
• VFX SupervisorTu Wei-ting

Themes & keywords

What it's about, really

• infidelity
• dysfunctional family
• single mother
• meerkat
• taipei
• mother and daughter
• sex
• sisters
• night market
• grandmother's birthday
• noodles

Release history · US

When it landed

• Premiere2025-10-03· Mill Valley Film Festival
• Premiere2025-11-01· Miami Film Festival GEMS
• Premiere2025-10-29· SCAD Savannah Film Festival
• Premiere2025-11-15· San Diego Asian Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-19· Montclair Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-20· Chicago International Film Festival / Philadelphia International Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-22· Hawai'i International Film Festival
• Premiere2025-10-24· AFI Fest
• Theatrical (limited)2025-11-14R
• Theatrical (limited)2026-01-16· 35mm Screening | Film at Lincoln Center

Also known as

International titles

• Solaxay QızAZ
• 左撇子女孩HK
• 左撇子女孩TW
• Left-handed girl. To była ręka... diabła!PL
• Left Handed GirlUS
• Solak KızTR
• Zuopiezi nuhaiTW
• KairiarankėLT