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Festival 2025
Unmarried Mothers (未婚媽媽)
Taiwan, 1980

Feature
Directed by
Mi-Mi Lee
Running time
93 mins
Feature

This taboo-busting Taiwanese drama from 1980 was directed by Mi-Mi Lee, a female pioneer in an industry then dominated by men. Hsiao-Peng is sent to a maternity home for young, single pregnant women – most of whom have been sent there by their embarrassed parents, who want their daughters to have the baby in secret and then adopted. Hsiao-Peng slowly overcomes her depressive thoughts and builds strong bonds with the other women; and after moving out, they continue to support one another. In advocating for atypical family models, Unmarried Mothers was ahead of its time, while its emphasis on female agency still feels genuinely empowering 45 years later: the sequence when the friends arrange their household furniture, set to an orchestration of ABBA’s Dancing Queen, is unlike anything else you’ll see in Taiwanese cinema.


Tickets


2 May 2025, 6:00 PM
Rich Mix 
Director Biography



Born to a Hakka family in Pingtung, Lee Mi-Mi made her debut as director in 1972 with the Taiwanese-language film Pure Love, and went on to direct and independently produce the ‘Taiwanese Urban Female Trilogy’. She has also worked in TV on primetime dramas.

Additional Information



With support from the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan, and the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute

Content Notes: Contains distressing scenes of abortion, sexual assault, misogyny, and forced separation