A Brighter Summer Day

A Brighter Summer Day (牯嶺街少年殺人事件, 1991) — watch online on iFILM. Edward Yang's nearly four-hour Taiwanese drama follows Xiao Si'r, a fourteen-year-old boy caught between street gangs and family pressure in early 1960s Taipei. His father is a civil servant; his world is one of cramped apartments, exam anxiety, and rival youth factions ruling the streets after dark.

Xiao Si'r falls for Ming — a girl already entangled with a gang leader, someone the whole neighbourhood knows is off-limits. Chang Chen plays the boy with a quiet intensity; Lisa Yang gives Ming a stillness that makes her impossible to read. Their pull toward each other runs through everything else in the film — the father's slow unravelling under political pressure, the siblings navigating an overcrowded household, the violence that erupts without warning.

Yang spent over a decade developing the script, based on a real murder case that shocked Taiwan in 1961. The theatrical cut ran 228 minutes; the full director's version arrived years later. Critics at Sight & Sound, BBC and Cahiers du Cinéma have repeatedly placed the film among the greatest ever made. Stream A Brighter Summer Day online on iFILM.