New Restoration

“Yi Yi is an ​‘oeuvre-monde,’ a work of art that builds its own world … Yang brings together the rigour of the engineer he once was and the poet he has always been, paying special attention to the economic and social mutations of his country.”

Michel Ciment, Positif

Intimate yet epic, tender but honest, rooted in realism while unafraid to summon magic, Yi Yi is Edward Yang’s beloved final feature, a virtual summation of the director’s signature themes and tonal range. His film revolves around a middle-class Taipei family weathering the vicissitudes of life, love, and death over a year. Its trio of perspectives—deftly balanced, sometimes mirrored—belongs to husband NJ (Wu Nien-jen), a businessman unexpectedly reunited with an old flame; his teenage daughter (Kelly Lee), tormented by her perceived part in her grandmother’s stroke; and his young son (Jonathan Chang), probing reality with his father’s camera. Though not oblivious to the cruelties of the world, Yi Yi is buoyed by an unmistakable warmth and sense of quietude. A film to cherish and hold close, Yi Yi figured prominently in our major Yang retrospective in 2024, but it wasn’t until the film’s 25th anniversary that its restoration from the original negative could be completed.

Best Director
Cannes 2000

“Few films speak so profoundly to life at the onset of the 21st century as this intimate epic.”

Tom Charity, Sight and Sound
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