“Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.”— Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1978.
“At her back there was nowhere to hide, only more crumbling streets, more fragile, half-broken buildings; a mile of ground a whale could cover in less than a minute, and, beyond that, the empty sea.”— Michel Faber, Fish”, in Some Rain Must Fall : And Other Stories, 1998.
This year’s FIPRESCI Award recipient at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival is Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall (2024). The director explains that Michel Faber’s short story collection inspired the film’s title, Some Rain Must Fall: And Other Stories. As a Chinese-speaking juror, I explained to my fellow jury members that the film also has a Chinese title, “A Woman in the Empty Room,” which exists independently of its English title. This Chinese title evokes something akin to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, though it leans toward having nowhere to hide in an emotional or psychological space.
This theme of having nowhere to hide resonates across all eight films selected for this year’s FIPRESCI award. These subject matters and their cinematography confront the oppressive relations of power, depicting characters who, in constrained spaces, question and resist authority. They pose a central question reminiscent of cinema hydrology: If rain must fall and downpours are inevitable, how can one resist, retreat, or persist? Instead of simply spreading downward, can water find alternative forms or even reverse its course through infiltration or countercurrent action?
Films such as Mongrel (Wei Liang Chiang, You Qiao Yin, 2024) , Three Castrated Goats (Xingyu Ye, 2024), and Locust (Keff, 2024) examine marginalized protagonists’ symbolic and literal plights. These characters navigate oppressive landscapes where governmentality seeps into biopolitical control: human trafficking rings targeting migrant workers, surveillance drones enforcing state health measures, and mafia-like forces tied to capitalist greed. Humans are reduced to bare life or treated like disposable straw dogs in these worlds. Yet the films depict the downtrodden rising: greyhounds finding dignity under modest shelter, lambs fleeing slaughter, and insects leaping from graves, showing that there are limits to power’s infiltration.
Power’s infiltration is not only limited; water, flowing downward through time and space, also holds the potential for reversal or reverse osmosis. A prime example of temporal resistance is found in A Journey in Spring (Tzu-Hui Peng, Ping-Wen Wang, 2023), set in Taiwan’s rainy northeastern region. A grieving husband, unwilling to let go of his late wife, freezes her body in a large freezer to halt its decay. In spatial terms, films like Salli (Chien-Hung Lien, 2023) and Love Lies (Miu-Kei Ho, 2024) explore women ensnared by online romance scams. Refusing to heed warnings from others, they venture abroad to uncover the truth about their dream partners, demonstrating that only they can awaken from their self-imposed illusions.
Such challenges to temporal and spatial boundaries are masterfully addressed in Some Rain Must Fall (Qiu Yang, 2024), which pushes these limits to their fullest. The FIPRESCI jury commended the film: “Some Rain Must Fallcreates possibilities beyond the established female archetypes in Asia, presenting a woman’s self-awareness and decision-making. Through its highly refined aesthetics, we can see the intensity and necessity of the filmmaker’s creative drive. From the confinement and escape within specific spatial boundaries, to the pervasive social violence and the struggle to break free, both the writing, direction, and cinematography complete a highly intricate dialectic.”
Some Rain Must Fall follows a woman with a rebellious teenage daughter, who, on the way home, accidentally injures an older woman. This incident triggers a cascade of domestic crises: her daughter refuses to communicate, her aging parents demand care, and marital discord pushes her toward divorce. When it rains, it pours. Even her washing machine breaks down, compounding her struggles. The woman is shown twice lying alone in the center of an empty basketball court, its spaciousness contrasting sharply with the constriction of her reality. In these moments, she asks herself, “Why am I here?” Her lingering posture in and out of the frame in the film’s closing scene is profoundly significant.
Similarly, Stuntman (Albert Leung, Herbert Leung, 2024) recounts the fading glory of Hong Kong’s once-thriving action film industry. Yet rather than advocating for stunt performers to regain their past splendor, the film suggests not becoming a substitute—for others or oneself. Instead, it calls for reclaiming individuality. It’s a reminder that resistance within power relations must arise from within, reversing the flow of domination—whether through state laws or familial traditions. Like rain leaves traces, water finding its form to go or stay low is a testament to dignity and survival.
By Austing Ming Han HSU
Edited by Anne-Christine Loranger
Copyright FIPRESCI