Darkness and Light is a 1999 Taiwanese narrative film directed by Chang Tso-chi. It was screened as part of the Directors' Fortnight section of the 52nd Cannes Film Festival, and won the Grand Prix at the 12th Tokyo International Film Festival. Darkness and Light was also nominated for seven different categories at the 36th Taipei Golden Horse Film Awards and went on winning the Jury Award, the Best Original Screenplay Award, and the Best Film Editing Award. In 2010, it was ranked 43 of the Top 100 Chinese-language films by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards Committee.

Plot

Darkness and Light unfolds in a fishing town in Keelung, a port city near Taipei. Kang-yi, a seventeen-year-old student in Taipei returns home in Keelung for summer vacation. Growing up with an absent mother, Kang-yi takes care of her family: her intellectually disabled younger brother, her blind father, and her grandparents. All of them live together in an apartment complex in Keelung and work as masseurs at the massage parlor run by Kang-yi’s father out of their apartment home after a car accident blinds him and kills Kang-yi’s mother when Kang-yi was little. Kang-yi's family depends on her to connect with the outside worlds as she helps guide them at work and through everyday tasks. Kang-yi meets Ah Ping, a young gangster from a mainlander family who just moves into her apartment building. Kang-yi slowly develops a crush on Ah Ping. As the two of them start hanging out around the neighborhood and eventually make a trip to Taipei together, they become embroiled in a gangland fight that unfortunately kills Ah Ping. Meanwhile, Kang-yi’s father falls ill and eventually passes away after his trip to Taipei with Kang-yi. Devastated by the tragedy of losing both her father and Ah Ping, Kang-yi sees her father and Ah Ping's magical return in the film's dream-like ending. Darkness and Light ends with a surreal sequence following a firework showering from Kang-yi’s window, during which Kang-yi’s father and Ah Ping, the two characters who have died previously, return to Kang-yi’s home for a meal and are warmly greeted by everyone.