SEVEN DAYS IN HEAVEN

父後七日

BONUS FEATURES: TRAILERS, MAKING-OF

精彩花絮：預告片|幕後特輯

Directors: WANG Yu-Lin, Essay LIU, Writer: Essay LIU Cast: WANG Li-Wen, WU Peng-Fon, CHEN Cha-Shiang, Tiger CHEN, Tai Bao (Kanin CHEUNG), CHEUNG Si-Yin

Adapted from Essay Liu’s tearjerking autobiographical essay that won Taiwan’s top literacy award, Seven Days in Heaven is a sentimental and insightful comedy about the formalities of death. Mei’s father just passed away. She and relatives domestic and abroad set off for their home village to attend the 7-day mourning ritual hosted by a Daoist priest. Together the modernized international urbanites experience reverse-cultural shock with rural traditions that are as fascinating as exhausting. The rare reunion lets the new generation reflect on their interaction with the old man and piece together a fuller image that couldn’t be seen from each individual’s perspective. After the funeral, each family member moves on to life elsewhere with a deepened connection to their root. Mei finally gets to cope with the loss in her very own way.

FESTIVAL AND AWARDS

Golden Horse Film Festival

Hong Kong Film Awards

Taipei Film Festival

REVIEW QUOTES

“Something of a maverick… In turns absurdly funny, borderline sentimental, and emotionally astute, Wang and Liu (who also wrote the screenplay) find the validity in every kind of response to death anyone could possibly have.”

-Elizabeth Kerr, Hollywood Reporter

“ Between the comic detours and jumping through the hoops of the mourning rituals is a recognition of the process as way to cope with the emotional stress and come to terms with the loss.”

- Sean Axmaker, Slant Magazine

“a mature, distanced observation of traditional funerary rites in the Taiwanese countryside, the cross-generational dialogue and understanding established between traditional and modern, rural and urban, values.…captures those moments of intense ambivalence, when the pain of loss is numbed by the ridiculousness of ceremony. The yoking together of contrary ideas here results in an ironically pleasant, somewhat discordant harmony in which hushed emotions and a subdued, dark charm glimmer through the roaring drama and jest.”

-Lee Hyo-won, Korea Times

“It’s actually refreshing to see this most difficult and sullen of times presented with humor, especially when looking at an ancient religious ritual…They are joined by a hilarious Daoist priest and a professional mourning weeper (she gets the funniest moments), and (literally) wackiness ensues.”

-Erik McClanahan, The Playlist

“…avoids both exoticism and the usual funeral-film cliches (family rows etc.) and lets the contradictions between tradition and modernism creep up on the viewer in an undramatic, almost semi-documentary way...the performance by Wang Liwen as the daughter stays in the memory, growing from nothing to a fully-fledged character whose buried grief so realistically surfaces long after the official mourning process.”

-Derek Elley, SinoCinema

“a complex and insightful examination of the grieving process.”

-Joe Bendel, J.B spins