Dear Tenant

Winner, Best Leading Actor and Best Supporting Actress, Golden Horse Film Festival, 2020. Winner of three Golden Horse awards including Best Leading Actor for Mo Tzu-Yi, the film tells the story of Mr. Lin, an apartment tenant who tends to the daily needs of the elderly apartment owner and helps look after her orphaned nine-year-old grandson, whom he has legally adopted. When the boy’s uncle returns from overseas and charges him with using the adoption as pretext to secure the deeds to the apartment, a troubled past is brought to light. Suffused with melancholy, tenderness, and a sense of the daily rhythms of metropolitan Taiwan, Dear Tenant dramatizes the continued challenges faced by queer couples despite the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019 and serves as a showcase for Mo’s subtle, heartbreaking performance.

Directed by Cheng Yu-chieh