The Rooftop

Yu-Cheng is a Taiwanese teenager with a girlfriend, Wen-Ting, and a problem he cannot explain: whenever they make love, he struggles to breathe. He tells himself it is nerves, or the heat, or nothing at all, but the pattern keeps returning, and so does the pull he feels toward his classmate Ching-Hao. Directed by Po Cheng Teng, this nineteen-minute drama asks whether a young person's body truly belongs to him, and answers through small, closely observed moments on school rooftops and in bedrooms where the expected script of growing up does not quite fit. Joshua Yang, Vivi Yeh, Hu Jhih-ciang and Tai-chi Fan-Chiang make up the cast. Gentle and perceptive, The Rooftop is a coming-of-age story about the gap between the life a teenager is supposed to want and the feelings he is only beginning to understand.