My New Friends

My New Friends — Plot

Tsai interrupted his pre-production for The River to make this pioneering documentary for Taiwan's nascent AIDS-awareness campaign. Ignoring instructions to 'play down the gay angle', he centres the film on his own very candid conversations with two HIV+ young men. Sadly the identities of the interviewees have to be concealed, and so the freewheeling camerawork focuses most often on Tsai himself; but the sense of rapport between the director and his 'new friends' is palpable and very moving, even to Western viewers already only too familiar with these issues.

• Release date
• January 1, 1995
• Runtime
• 56 min
• Genres
• Documentary, TV Movie
• Director
• Tsai Ming-liang

My New Friends — Cast

Tsai Ming-liang Himself Lee Kang-sheng Pearlly Chua