Sabu's 'Arrested Memory' Leads Golden Horse Awards With 11 Nominations

Sabu's "Arrested Memory" topped the nominations for the 63rd Golden Horse Awards with 11 nods, one ahead of Shu Qi's directing debut "Girl," which collected 10.

Joseph Hsu Chen-chieh's "Double Happiness" and Yeung Leung-chuen's "We Are Born Good" follow with nine nominations each. All four films compete for best narrative feature and best film editing, and each has a nominee in either the best director or best new director race. Anthony Chen's "We Are All Strangers" fills the fifth best narrative feature slot.

Sabu, Hsu and Chen compete for best director alongside Herman Yau, nominated for "We're Nothing at All," and Edmund Yeo for "The Age of Goodbyes." Shu and Yeung face off in the best new director category against Priscilla Ang Geck-geck ("Ah Girl"), Shieh Meng-ju ("Mudborn") and Michelle Zhou ("Big Little Things").

Ethan Juan's performance in "Arrested Memory" earned him a best leading actor nomination. His competitors are Leon Dai ("Kung Fu"), Liu Kuan-ting ("Double Happiness"), Yeung Wai-lun ("We Are Born Good") and Jack Tan ("Dead Tide"). The best leading actress field pairs Yeo Yann-yann ("We Are All Strangers") with Angela Yuen ("Afterpiece"), Jennifer Yu ("Double Happiness"), Liang Cuishan ("Big Little Things") and Chung Suet-ying ("We Are Born Good").

A Field of 587 Entries

Organizers counted 587 entries this year: 92 narrative features, 60 feature documentaries, three animated features, 294 live-action shorts, 71 documentary shorts and 67 animated shorts. Ma Shih-yuan, last year's best new performer winner, and Jimmy Liu, a nominee in that same category, announced the nominations.

The documentary feature race includes Lee Li-shao's "The Dance of a Soloist," Wong Siu-pong's "The Whisper of Sunlight," Chan Kam-hei's "Scenes from Departure," Jiang Wenjie's "Almost Home" and Lin Yu-en's "Etude." Notably, Tsai Ming-liang appears among the documentary short nominees for "Night Journey."

In the shorts categories, best live action short nominees span Yu Chih-chieh's "The Last Jiangshi," Ivan Tan's "She Said," Chung Kam-nei's "Three Little Pigs," Lim Jen-nee's "Fruit" and Kuo Pei-chi's "Her Slope." Animated short contenders include Lin Yi-ling's "Stacy," Zhang Puzhen's "Deep End," Chen Ting-jui's "You Are Not Part of the Cake," Fish Wang and Yang Ya-ting's "The Buried Baby" and Li Yizhou's "Bowknot."

Colorist Moya Chou Named Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker

Wen Tien-hsiang, CEO of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee, named colorist Moya Chou as this year's Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year. Chou has spent close to three decades in color grading, a career that straddles the shift from celluloid to digital, working with directors and cinematographers to build the light and color texture of each film. His credits include "Us and Them," "Dear Ex," "I Weirdo," "The Soul," "The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon" and "A Foggy Tale." His 2026 projects include "Sayang," "The Age of Goodbyes" and "The Photo from 1977."

Yu Kan-ping receives this year's lifetime achievement award.

Ceremony Moves to a Sunday

Voting runs in three rounds — preliminary, nomination and final — with winners decided on the day of the ceremony. The jury will be revealed in late October.

Every nominated film will screen during the Golden Horse Film Festival, which opens Nov. 6. The ceremony takes place Nov. 22 at Taipei Music Center and, from this edition onward, moves to a Sunday rather than a Saturday. TTV will broadcast the show in Taiwan, with MyVideo by Taiwan Mobile holding exclusive live-streaming rights. StarHub will air the ceremony in Singapore and Astro in Malaysia. Viewers elsewhere can watch via the festival's YouTube channel.

With "Arrested Memory" and "Girl" separated by a single nomination, and both films looming over the craft categories — from William Chang Suk-ping's editing of "Girl" to Matthieu Laclau's cutting of "Arrested Memory" — the November 22 ceremony in Taipei looks set to turn the 63rd edition into a two-way race at the top.