What Taiwanese film legend Sylvia Chang enjoys most about working with emerging directors
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The Taiwanese film icon is currently touring festivals with heartfelt drama
Daughter's Daughter , fine-tuning post-production on romance film Measure in Love and writing her next directing project, which she hopes to start filming in 2026.
'I haven't relaxed at all,' Chang says, sitting in a hotel lobby restaurant in Udine, Italy, where she
received the Golden Mulberry Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2025 Far East Film Festival. It is her second visit to the festival – her first was in 2018, to screen
Love Education
'I've been on the stage, working with young filmmakers, acting, helping people with scripts and writing my own things – which excites me, but it's also very tiring,' the 71-year-old says.
Sylvia Chang and Tian Zhuangzhuang in a still from Love Education (2017).
A beloved entertainer since the 1970s, Chang became a pop singer soon after she finished school.
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'I thought I would continue as a singer,' she says. 'But, once I started acting, I made a promise to myself that filmmaking would be my lifetime work, not just a stepping stone in a career. I found filmmaking a medium you can explore in many different ways, that teaches you so much about life.'
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