Detention

OCOpen Caption screening
Additional program content
SFSensory Friendly. Details HERE

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Detention

Adapted from the eponymous video game, this masterful debut is a shocking historical drama, a melancholy coming-of-age tale, and a nightmarish horror film. It’s 1962 Taiwan, during the time of the White Terror, and martial law is in full force on the island. In this time of extreme repression, all ideas considered to be dissident are banned, and the culprits are tortured or executed. Tsuihua Secondary School is not an exception from this oppression. Despite close surveillance by the military police, Professor Chang (Fu Meng-Po) runs an underground literary club where he and his students learn about banned books and dream of freedom. One of his club members, Fang (Gingle Wang) is madly in love with him. The usually shy teenage girl from an abusive home manages to open up like a book in his presence. Then Chang disappears. One night, Fang wakes up at her desk, but the school has changed. As she wanders through the sinister corridors and other dilapidated rooms in search of her teacher, she meets Wei (Tse Jing-Hua). Together, they must confront the ghosts and deformed monsters that have taken over their alma mater to find out what happened there.

"A stirring political fable dressed in the ghoulish weaves of a creepy monster flick"
Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle


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