Mere months after sweeping the 97th Academy Awards with “Anora,” Sean Baker is making a tangential return to the Oscar race. The auteur co-wrote and edited “Left-Handed Girl,” the solo debut of his “Take Out” co-director Shih-Ching Tsou, which has been selected as Taiwan’s official Oscar submission.
Like “Take Out,” “Left-Handed Girl” is set in the restaurant industry, following a mother-daughter-daughter relationship in Taipei as the family attempts to open a food business. An official synopsis for the film reads: “A single mother and her two daughters return to Taipei after several years of living in the countryside to open a stand at a buzzing night market. Each in their way will have to adapt to this new environment to make ends meet and maintain the family unity. But when their traditional grandfather forbids his youngest left-handed granddaughter from using her ‘devil hand,’ generations of family secrets begin to unravel.”
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“Left-Handed Girl” stars Janel Tsai, Nina Ye, Teng-Hui Huang, Shih-Yuan Ma. Tsou, Baker, Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie, and Alice Labadie serve as executive producers.
The film premiered in the Critics’ Week section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where many critics praised its realist storytelling.
“Tsou applies the restless energy of her longtime collaborator’s beloved social-realist works — portraits of men and women working against their class station to find a better living — to ‘Left-Handed Girl,’ which rests on the skillfully directed performance of a five-year-old girl (Nina Ye, a small child who effervescently commands the camera) in the lead,” IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio wrote in his Cannes review. “The movie, even when tracking the older daughter I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tasi) who make up this heartwarming family trio, is always inside the tiny girls’ eyes and ears, looking at the world from a place of wonderment and confusion as she tries to make sense of an adult world. The girl’s grasp, though, on Mandarin and years spent living with adults and fewer children makes her already almost too mature for her own good.”
“Left-Handed Girl” opens in select theaters on November 14 before streaming on Netflix on November 28. Watch the trailer below.
