My New Friends

My New Friends (1995) blends Documentary and TV Movie elements. Top cast includes Tsai Ming-liang, Lee Kang-sheng, and Pearlly Chua. The narrative builds around escalating stakes, urgent decisions, and action-driven momentum.

Actor: Tsai Ming-liang

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.