On DVD now

Stray Dogs (Jiaoyou)

A film by Tsai Ming Liang

Synopsis

Stray Dogs, the latest film by visionary director Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye Dragon Inn) links together a series of sumptuously composed scenes that tell the story of a broken family living on the margins of Taipei society through tableau-like scenes, often without words. ‘Like Tsai's sublime I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, Stray Dogs plucks its characters from society's margins; without sentimentalizing their subjects, these films exude empathy for day labourers and the homeless. As one mysterious, gorgeously composed scene gives way to the next, we come to know these characters, and something of their history, a time when they indeed had a home, a mother, a very different sort of life. We gaze into their past with them, are invited to share in their loss, and, gradually, imagine some brighter future.’ (Toronto Film Festival Catalogue)

Grand Jury Prize, Venice Film Festival
Toronto Film Festival, Wavelengths

Where It's On

Week Commencing 08.05.2015

ICA

The Mall

London SW1Y 9AH

020 7930 3647

9,10,14 May only

Week Commencing 15.05.2015

ICA	The Mall	London SW1Y 9AH	020 7930 3647	17 May only
Home	2 Tony Wilson Place	Manchester M15 4FN	0161 200 1500	16 May only
Hackney Picturehouse	270 Mare St	London W8 1HE	0871 902 5734	17 May only

Week Commencing 22.05.2015

Filmhouse	88 Lothian Rd	Edinburgh EH3 9BZ	0131 228 2688	22 & 24 May

Week Commencing 29.05.2015

Trailer

Director — Tsai Ming Liang

Tsai Ming-Liang was born in Malaysia in 1957. He is one of the most prominent film directors of the new cinema movement in Taiwan that started in the early 1990s, using the same actor, Lee Kang Sheng, in film after film. In 1994, his film Vive L'Amour was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. All his feature films have been been selected by either the Cannes, Berlin or Venice film festivals. In 2009, the Louvre Museum invited him to make the first fiction feature film for their collection “Le Louvre s'offre aux cineastes”: Face (Visage) became a benchmark for filmmakers venturing into the art world. In 2012, the slow walking performance by Lee Kang Sheng, originally from a stage play, was developed into the “slow walking Long March” series of short films, which includes No Form, Walker, Sleepwalk and Diamond Sutra. These short films were made in different cities and across different fields, combining cinema, performance and installations to present an intellectual criticism of the endless pursuit of contemporary life. Stray Dogs and Journey to the West are his latest ventures into cinema.

Filmography

Stray Dogs (2013)
Journey to the West (2013)
Face (2009)
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006)
The Wayward Cloud (2004)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)
The Skywalk Is Gone (2002)
What Time is it There? (2001)
The Hole (1998)
The River (1997)
Vive l'Amour (1994)
Rebels of the Neon God (1992)

Cast & Credits

STRAY DOGS

Directed by Tsai Ming Liang

Screenplay Tung Cheng Yu, Tsai Ming-liang, Peng Fei

Photography Liao Pen Jung, Sung Wen Zhong

Editor Lei Zhen Qing

Art Direction Masa Liu, Tsai Ming Liang

Set Decorator Li Yufeng

Costume Designer Wang Chia Hui

Sound Mark Ford

Sound Designer Tu Duu Chih, Kuo Li Chi

Assistant Director Feng Fiu

Production Manager Chen Wei Jie

Produced by Vincent Wang

Co-producers Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin.

A Homegreen Films, JBA Prods. Production in association with House On Fire, Urban Distribution Intl.

CAST

Lee Kang Sheng

Yang Kuei Mei

Lu Yi Ching

Chen Shiang Chyi

Lee Yi Cheng

Lee Yi Chieh

Wu Jin Kai

Taiwan / France 2013 138 minutes

Images

Click any still to enlarge

The Critics

★★★★★

'A mind-enlarging marvel, messianic with crazed poety'

Nigel Andrews, The Financial Times

★★★★★

'A mesmerising piece of cinema...a monumental achievement'

David Jenkins, Little White Lies

★★★★★

'A masterpiece of social realism, a distinctive and beguiling study of society's displaced and marginalised'

Patrick Gamble, Cinevue

★★★★

'The lengthy final two shots...rank among the best work this inimitable artist has ever done'

Keith Uhlich, Time Out

★★★★★

'This, its director's apparent swansong, is a top to bottom swell of indelible mystery, misery, beauty and more.'

Michael Pattison, Grolsch Canvas

‘…essential viewing if you’re interested in what cinema can do with time, space, fragmentation…mesmerizing’

Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

‘This film’s poetry goes straight to the heart and solar plexus.’

Nigel Andrews, Financial Times

★★★★★

"Every shot of Stray Dogs has been built with utter formal mastery, every sequence exerts an almost telepathic grip"

Robbie Collin, The Daily Telegraph

‘Tsai may well be cinema’s foremost connoisseur of defeat: the best chronicler we have of the temps mort between social reality and darkly comic dreams of despair.’

Tony Rayns, Film Comment

‘masterpiece’

Andrew Schenker, Slant Magazine

‘Venice gets its first bona fide masterpiece in the latest film from Taiwan's Tsai Ming-liang… Though Stray Dogs boasts that rare quality of being unlike anything else out there, the film it bares closest comparison to is Andrei Tarkovsky'sStalker… Every shot in this film instantly etches itself on the memory, but you'll have to find a special place for the last three which are some of the most extraordinary ever committed to film.’

David Jenkins, Little White Lies

Links

Interview with Tsai Ming-liang in Little White Lies

In Conversation with Tsai Ming-liang on Stray Dogs

Stray Dogs Original Pressbook

Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4

Interview with Tsai Ming-liang in Film CommentShorter press UK bookInterview with Tsai Ming-liang in The Financial Times

Bookings & Press

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.