Compiled by YASMIN ABDUL LATIF, C.ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN
FOLLOWING its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, Malaysian film Age of Goodbyes, has officially been selected as the opening film at the 2026 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, China Press reported.
Director Edmund Yeo said he was surprised and taken aback by the announcement.
“This piece of work is deeply rooted in Malaysia, and was jointly completed by filmmakers from Malaysia and Taiwan.
“For it to be exposed to Taiwanese audiences as the opening film is truly very meaningful to me,” he said.
It was reported that the Age of Goodbyes was an adaptation of a novel of the same name written by Malaysian author Li Zi Shu.
Set in Ipoh in the 1960s and the following decades, it is a story of romance, heartbreak and intrigue.
It will be screened on the first day of the film festival on Nov 6.
> A couple in Gansu, China, hired a gang of men to kidnap their 18-year-old daughter who ran away after refusing an arranged marriage.
She was rescued thanks to the quick action of a retired army veteran, China Press reported.
Local press reported that the parents had accepted the bride price from the groom’s family and arranged a marriage without her knowledge.
They even forcibly stopped her from going to school.
The girl sought help from a public welfare organisation that covertly transported her and arranged for her to work at a cafe in Shenzhen.
Unable to back out of the deal with the groom’s family, her parents hired three men to kidnap their daughter and have her brought back to Gansu.
They pretended to be customers at her workplace and abducted her on Aug 26.
As they were driving away, they caught the attention of retired army veteran Master He, a bus driver, who witnessed the kidnapping.
He reported the incident to the police and captain of his bus fleet.
Police later managed to rescue the girl from Gansu.
When the news broke, Internet users questioned how many girls ended up being forced into marriages.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
