One of the most surprising things about this film is that it was completely in the Mandarin language. I knew it was about an illegal Chinese immigrant, but the dialogue is... really good. Co-directed by Tsou Shih-Ching, who would go on to produce pretty much all of Sean Baker's subsequent films, I feel like she really brought out a lot of personality and intimacy to this film. The characters feel so genuine and relatable.

A bit unrelated but in 1995, Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg created the Dogme 95 movement where they created films based off a set of rules. Pretty much by stripping down all production value, the story/acting/characters would be at the forefront of the film. Ironically,…

Life sucks. Things can always sidetrack in all the wrong directions. Dreams that, no matter how hard you strive, won't necessarily come true. We all know it's shit, but there's really nothing you can do about it. Sometimes it's the true alliance you never realized you needed that will help you get through the atrocities of life.

I've seen two of Baker's films and adored them dearly. This is also one that I really enjoyed. This is cinéma vérité at its finest. It's interesting how the whole ordeal of getting the money could easily go off course at every minute. I could definitely see the Safdie brothers directing the hell out of this. I think it is in some way…

"Take Out" is a 2004 film directed by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. The film is an advantageous effort of smaller budget independent cinema, essentially shot on a budget of 3,000 dollars and instilling the predominant use of digital only filmmaking. As the energy is raw and down to intimate earth in tone, the film is progressed further with the use of nonprofessional actors in an act to add further authenticity to the abounding production, all within a resounding element of Cinéma vérité, or an extremely truthful narrative to is honest to subject matter in front of us without a layer of narrative directional overtone. This is a trend that Baker is excellent with in continuance, as many of his…