A Brighter Summer Day

Set in Taipei in the early 1960s, A Brighter Summer Day follows Xiao Si'r, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy and the fourth of five children in a civil servant's family. After a poor mark in one subject, he is moved from the day school to the evening school, which his middle-class father regards as a disreputable placement. At his new school, pupils are addressed by assigned numbers and discipline is harsh. Outside it, rival youth gangs such as the Little Park Boys and the 217s fight repeatedly, and Xiao Si'r is drawn into their world, including his attachment to Ming, the girlfriend of a gang leader. The film is a crime drama set against the uneasy atmosphere of Taiwan in that decade.

Edward Yang directed, and wrote the screenplay with Yen Hung-ya and Mingtang Lai; Yu Wei-Yen produced. The film runs 237 minutes and followed Yang's Taipei Story and Terrorizers, preceding A Confucian Confusion and Yi Yi. Chang Chen plays Xiao Si'r, with Lisa Yang, Chang Kuo-Chu, Elaine Jin, Wang Chuan and Han Chang among the credited cast of 120.

A Brighter Summer Day holds a rating of 8.2 on IMDb from about 15,000 votes and the same score on TMDB from roughly 406 votes. A film critics' rating of 9.6 from 26 reviews places it somewhat above those audience scores.