# Stray Dogs
**Stray Dogs** (郊遊; *Jiao You*) is a 2013 drama film directed by the Taiwanese filmmaker [Tsai Ming-liang](https://www.edgepedia.org/tsai-ming-liang), following a homeless father and his two young children surviving on the margins of Taipei. A Taiwan–France co-production in Mandarin, it runs 138 minutes and won the Grand Jury Prize, the second-highest honor, at the 70th Venice International Film Festival, where it was the only Chinese-language film in competition.[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821) • [2](https://news.pts.org.tw/article/249719)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title / director | 郊遊 (*Jiao You*), directed by Tsai Ming-liang, born in Malaysia in 1957[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821) • [3](https://www.urbandistrib.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Stray-Dogs-Pressbook.pdf) |
| Production | Taiwan and France, 2013, color, DCP, 138 minutes, Mandarin[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821) |
| Lead | Lee Kang-sheng as a single father working as a human billboard holding real-estate advertising placards in traffic[2](https://news.pts.org.tw/article/249719) |
| Venice 2013 | Grand Jury Prize at the 70th festival; Tsai's fourth competition entry for the Golden Lion[2](https://news.pts.org.tw/article/249719) • [4](https://cac.dila.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E7%94%9F%E6%B6%AF%E7%99%BC%E5%B1%95%E8%88%87%E8%AB%AE%E8%A9%A2%E5%AD%B8%E6%9C%83%E7%94%9F%E6%B6%AF%E9%9B%BB%E5%AD%90%E5%A0%B1_%E7%AC%AC%E4%BA%8C%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%89%E6%9C%9F20161120.pdf) |
| Golden Horse Awards (50th, 2013) | Won Best Director and Best Leading Actor; nominated for Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound Effects[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3119416/awards/) |
| Other honors | Asia-Pacific Film Festival Best Actor and Best Sound; Dubai Best Director; Tallinn Special Jury Prize; Seville Best Director[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3119416/awards/) |
| Critical reception | Metascore 84 ("universal acclaim"); 86% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/stray-dogs/critic-reviews/) • [7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jiao_you_2013) |
## Spoilers
### Story and characters
The film follows Hsiao-kang, played by Tsai's longtime collaborator Lee Kang-sheng, a man Lee and the Golden Horse festival page describe as a "useless" man who earns his living holding up advertising placards in heavy traffic, smoking and urinating between shifts while the cars roar past.[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821) His only people are his two young children, played by Lee Yi-cheng and Lee Yi-chieh, who in the English-language materials are listed among the cast alongside the adult leads.[8](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/stray-dogs/) The family has no running water or electricity and sleeps together on a single worn mattress, huddled around a cabbage.[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821)
A woman, played by Chen Shiang-chyi, works at a supermarket where the children spend their days, and takes an interest in them.[8](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/stray-dogs/) In the film's second half the story shifts register: the family moves into a decaying apartment dominated by a large mural of a ruined landscape, and the narrative turns toward the surreal. Time Out's review notes the disorienting choice to have the female character played by three different performers, Yang Kuei-mei, Lu Yi-ching, and Chen Shiang-chyi, all regulars in Tsai's films.[9](https://www.timeout.com/movies/stray-dogs-1) The title refers both to real stray dogs in the film and to its principal characters, living what Film at [Lincoln Center](https://www.edgepedia.org/lincoln-center) calls "the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world."[8](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/stray-dogs/)
## Style
Tsai is known for long, nearly motionless takes, and *Stray Dogs* pushes the method to an extreme. The Guardian's Mark Kermode wrote that the film "requires a tolerance for extended shots of people looking, sleeping, eating and suffering," and singled out a ten-minute scene in which the father attempts to suffocate and soothe a cabbage, as well as a finale whose final two shots each run more than ten minutes.[10](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/10/stay-dogs-review-hypnotic-power) • [9](https://www.timeout.com/movies/stray-dogs-1) Tsai himself described the film at Venice as containing "no music, no songs, no stripping, no sex, just Lee Kang-sheng's face."[2](https://news.pts.org.tw/article/249719)
**A digital turning point.** *Stray Dogs* was the first feature film Tsai and his team shot with a digital camera, a significant change for a director who had always thought and created in film.[11](https://artist.nccu.edu.tw/2023fall/download/112-1.pdf) The screenplay is credited to Tung Cheng-yu, Tsai Ming-liang, and Song Peng-fei, with cinematography by Liao Pen-jung and Sung Wen-chung and sound by Duu-Chih Tu and Li Chi Kuo.[12](https://www.moviola.jp/jiaoyou/)
## Production in Taichung
Tsai located the film's principal setting at an old sugar factory district in Taichung with a large pond and century-old trees, which he chose after hearing about the site's secluded landscape; the Taichung City Government's Information Bureau supported the production as one of its key subsidy cases in 2012.[13](https://www.news.taichung.gov.tw/14786/14792/14798/513602) Lee Kang-sheng later recalled that the cabbage scene was shot in a ruin within the city, a wasteland amid urban prosperity whose contrast he found striking.[14](https://www.taichung.gov.tw/8868/8872/9962/949532)
## Release and reception
The film premiered in competition at Venice in September 2013 and went on to screen at Toronto, Busan, and the [New York Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-york-film-festival), among others.[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821) • [15](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/stray-dogs-nyff/) At the 50th Golden Horse Awards it won Best Director and Best Leading Actor, and Lee also took Best Actor at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival and the 2014 Taipei Film Festival.[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3119416/awards/) The Ministry of Culture awarded Tsai NT$2.5 million at a press conference after the Venice win.[16](https://newnet.tw/Newsletter/comment.aspx?Iinfo=5&iNumber=6735)
Critics were broadly enthusiastic. The film holds a Metascore of 84, with 12 of 14 counted reviews positive and none negative, and reviews in *The Telegraph*, *CineVue*, and *Slant Magazine* scored it 100.[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/stray-dogs/critic-reviews/) Robbie Collin of *The Telegraph* wrote that "every shot of Stray Dogs has been built with utter formal mastery."[6](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/stray-dogs/critic-reviews/) Reception was not uniform: Peter Bradshaw in *The Guardian* called the film's mystery opaque and its near-catatonic register sometimes unrewarding, while still calling Tsai "a deeply serious and distinctive film-maker."[17](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/07/stray-dogs-review-tsai-ming-liang-uncompromising) Academic criticism has read the film as a social critique of Taipei as a neoliberal consumer city, achieved through sustained long takes that create what Louis Lo of National Yang-Ming University calls a cinema of contemplation.[18](https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol21/iss5/7/)
## Tsai's announced farewell to features
At Venice, the 56-year-old Tsai announced that *Stray Dogs* would be his last feature film, saying he was tired of the theatrical release system and wanted to live rather than keep making features; he called it the most satisfying work of his career.[2](https://news.pts.org.tw/article/249719) He explained that he could not make films for the system, saying "cinema as an object of consumption limits my creativity" and that slowness was for him a technique for finding a path through the disorientation of imposed speed.[19](https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/243606) He did not stop making moving-image work: his 2019 documentary *Your Face* won the Golden Horse Award for Best Documentary, and he received the Pardo alla Carriera honor at Locarno in 2023.[1](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821) The film's afterlife has also extended into museums, with screenings at MoMA in 2022 and gallery presentations, a trajectory Tsai had already noted when he said that art institutions had offered his films a new exhibition venue after poor theatrical box office.[20](https://mobile-api.moma.org/calendar/events/6654) • [16](https://newnet.tw/Newsletter/comment.aspx?Iinfo=5&iNumber=6735)
## References
1. [郊遊 Stray Dogs, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival archive](https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/film/about/archive/detail/821)
2. [蔡明亮「郊遊」獲威尼斯評審團大獎, Public Television Service News (2013)](https://news.pts.org.tw/article/249719)
3. [Stray Dogs pressbook, Urban Distribution International](https://www.urbandistrib.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Stray-Dogs-Pressbook.pdf)
4. [台灣生涯發展與諮詢學會電子報第二十三期](https://cac.dila.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E7%94%9F%E6%B6%AF%E7%99%BC%E5%B1%95%E8%88%87%E8%AB%AE%E8%A9%A2%E5%AD%B8%E6%9C%83%E7%94%9F%E6%B6%AF%E9%9B%BB%E5%AD%90%E5%A0%B1_%E7%AC%AC%E4%BA%8C%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%89%E6%9C%9F20161120.pdf)
5. [Stray Dogs (2013) Awards, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3119416/awards/)
6. [Stray Dogs critic reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/stray-dogs/critic-reviews/)
7. [Stray Dogs (2013), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jiao_you_2013)
8. [Stray Dogs, Film at Lincoln Center](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/stray-dogs/)
9. [Stray Dogs review, Time Out (Keith Uhlich, 2015)](https://www.timeout.com/movies/stray-dogs-1)
10. [Stray Dogs (Jiao you) review, The Guardian (Mark Kermode, 2015)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/10/stay-dogs-review-hypnotic-power)
11. [孫松榮，《郊遊》專文，政治大學](https://artist.nccu.edu.tw/2023fall/download/112-1.pdf)
12. [映画『郊遊〈ピクニック〉』公式サイト, Moviola](https://www.moviola.jp/jiaoyou/)
13. [蔡明亮獲獎再次證明臺中市絕對是拍片好地方, Taichung City Government (2013)](https://www.news.taichung.gov.tw/14786/14792/14798/513602)
14. [《郊遊》座談會臺中登場, Taichung City Government](https://www.taichung.gov.tw/8868/8872/9962/949532)
15. [Stray Dogs (NYFF), Film at Lincoln Center](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/stray-dogs-nyff/)
16. [「郊遊」拍寫實社會 獲威尼斯評審團大獎, 新網新聞網](https://newnet.tw/Newsletter/comment.aspx?Iinfo=5&iNumber=6735)
17. [Stray Dogs review, The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw, 2015)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/07/stray-dogs-review-tsai-ming-liang-uncompromising)
18. [Louis Lo, "Enduring the Long Take: Tsai Ming-liang's Stray Dogs and the Dialectical Image," CLCWeb 21.5 (2019)](https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol21/iss5/7/)
19. [Stray Dogs: an apologia for slowness, Cineuropa (2013)](https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/243606)
20. [Stray Dogs, MoMA](https://mobile-api.moma.org/calendar/events/6654)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2010 to 2014 › Psychological and social drama films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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