甘露水 (Daughter of Nectar). 2025. Taiwan. Directed by Pang-Chuan Huang, Chunni Lin. North American premiere. DCP. In Taiwanese, Japanese; English subtitles. 142 min.
The titular Daughter of Nectar of Pang-Chuan Huang and Chunni Lin’s quietly magisterial feature debut is a 1921 sculpture by Taiwanese sculptor Huang Tu-Shui, whose early-20th-century studies led him to Japan, but whose relations with his home nation’s former colonizer made him a postwar pariah and forced his work into near-obscurity. As it revisits Huang’s refined practice—and questions of nationalism and arts education in the era more broadly—the film elegantly folds in the present day, including footage of contemporary students working on projects at Huang Tu-Shui’s alma mater, and the 2021 unveiling of the Daughter after 47 years in storage. Shot on tactile 16mm, deeply rhythmic in construction, and accented by subtle in-camera effects, Daughter of Nectar is intimate and grand.