Yi Yi

Yi Yi (2000) is Edward Yang's three-hour family drama from Taiwan, and you can watch it online on iFILM. One Taipei household, one full turn of the seasons — a wedding, a coma, a first crush and a funeral all fall inside the same stretch of time.

The film follows NJ, a fortysomething engineer whose life quietly comes apart. His mother-in-law collapses into a coma, his wife breaks down and retreats to a mountain retreat, his teenage daughter Ting-Ting tumbles into her first romance, and his eight-year-old son Yang-Yang wanders around photographing the backs of people's heads — the parts of themselves they can never see. On a business trip, NJ runs into Sherry, the woman he walked out on three decades earlier, and gets an unexpected shot at the choice he once dodged.

Yang shoots in long, patient takes, often through glass and reflections, with the hum of the city pressing in. The work earned him Best Director at Cannes, and critics still rank it among the high points of Taiwanese cinema. It rewards anyone who loves slow, soft-spoken films where ordinary domestic life slowly opens onto something much larger. Stream Yi Yi (2000) online on iFILM.