On the Way Home
2022 · 18m · Taiwan
Directed by Chiou Fu Chen
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A daughter named A Ying is exhausted from constantly traveling to care for her mother, who lives alone in a remote place. The Taiwanese short observes the quiet weight of caregiving across distance.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's doing the "tired caregiver" thing now, but Chen refuses the maudlin angle—there's a restraint here that feels almost antagonistic to the expected emotional payoff, which is exactly why it works.
The equal-weight titling of both women's names signals a deliberate formal choice that reframes the entire genealogy of caregiver narratives; Chen situates herself in a lineage of Taiwanese domestic realism while subtly unsettling its center of gravity.
Chen's decision to hold on A Ying's face during mundane transit moments—waiting, traveling, returning—turns exhaustion into a visual argument that needs no dialogue, and that economy of gesture is what elevates this from sentiment into something harder and truer.