UNFULFILLED DREAMS

The director, CHU Tien-wen, wrote many of the scripts for the famous Taiwanese director HOU Hsiao-hsien. She has been awarded Best Screenplay at the international Venice Film Festival and the Tokyo International Film Festival.

導演朱天文為國際知名導演侯孝賢的編劇，劇本曾獲得威尼斯影展和東京影展最佳劇本的殊榮。

Under a sweet osmanthus tree lived an ordinary family, and in their house was a cache of correspondences between the father, novelist CHU Hsi-ning, and the mother, translator LIU Mu-sha. Not quite love letters, these correspondences speak of great ambitions through words such as “literature alone must not be ordinary”.The CHU family’s three daughters compare and connect their parents’ works with childhood memories, reading aloud the letters from their youth, as though from the story of a thousand and one nights, searching through and overturning boxes and chests for the origins of the family’s memories, unleashing a current of faded times. Unfulfilled Dreams is the directorial debut of the eldest of the CHU daughters, CHU T’ien-wen. The husband and wife lived a simple life, but always held on to the belief that literature must not be ordinary, a belief that is still faithfully pursued by their daughters with pen and paper.

一個稿紙糊成的家，一場未竟的文學夢。平凡的桂花樹下人家，塵封著父親小說家朱西甯與母親翻譯家劉慕沙的書信，他們的情書非情書，還題下「唯有文學，不能平凡」的鴻鵠大志。朱西甯致力於小說創作，不斷突破自我風格，創新小說題材與寫作語言；劉慕沙從事日本文學翻譯，引介日本大家新視野。電影紀錄兩人從相識相戀的緣分，到抵抗外在壓力邁向婚姻的結合，撐起一個稿紙糊成的家，將文學作為一生燃燒的核心志業。