A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

A massive, staggering work of art. The narrative was a bit all over the place for my taste (Yi Yi also had the length and the multiple storylines and characters, but I felt that the pieces came together more cohesively) but I was just blown away by almost every second. Edward Yang feels like more than a filmmaker to me; his movies are like massive Shakesperean tragedies or Russian novels and his frames are paintings. The composition of the shots, the blocking of characters, the certain deliberate long takes or camera positioning were just unbelievable. The lighting, editing, tight directing. I mean its all just firing on every cylinder. He was a true artist.
There's so much in this masterpiece and at the end you really feel like you experienced an entire other world, not just geographically, but in terms of filmmaking prowess