The Outsiders (40th Anniversary) + Intro - Queer East Festival
Running time: 104 mins
Genre:
Release Date: 29/05/2026
Now restored in 4K, this first screen adaptation of Pai Hsien-Yung’s groundbreaking 1983 novel Crystal Boys tells the story of A-Qing, a high school student who is thrown out of his family home after being discovered having sex with a man. A-Qing heads to the gay cruising ground of Taipei New Park, where he finds refuge with a group of fellow queer outcasts. The film’s heady mix of dreamlike fantasy, hysterical melodrama, and glitzy nightclub scenes creates a camp, surreal mood. Yet director Yu Kan-Ping succeeds in capturing the emotional rawness of A-Qing’s experience, and from our 21st century perspective, offers a nostalgic documentation of real-life sites in Taipei’s historical cruising scene, now long gone. Stunningly shot and restored to include previously censored material, this stylistically dazzling adaptation can now be appreciated in its full, hallucinatory glory.
