Take Out
Press Play to start
Polish premiereTheatrical Screenings
Muranów
Muranów
Online Availability
Additional Materials
Film description
The crowded streets of Manhattan, a rainy afternoon in New York’s Chinatown. Ming Ding, a Chinese food delivery worker, has just one day to repay his debt to the migration mafia. Every run is a race against time, every stop is another tip counted towards the end of his shift. The camera follows the protagonist step by step through lifts, stairwells, and cramped flats, capturing the rhythm of work; the clink of coins, the sounds of the service counter, the breath of a man driven on by the system.
“Take Out” records a single day in which everything may fall apart, neither manifesto nor reportage, it documents what so often gets lost in discussions about migration: the everyday tally for entering a country and the costs of survival outside the “legal” sphere. Baker and Tsou immerse themselves in the Chinese diaspora, revealing the mechanics of migration’s economy, documenting them without pathos and without aestheticising tragedy. This is a film made for a handful of dollars, shot on the streets, instinctively, in a style that Baker would later perfect in “Tangerine” and Tsou in “Left Handed Girl”. Shaky shots, the absence of physical distance, and raw editing create the impression of constant running, of ceaseless circling along the path of winding choices that define the migration experience. “Take Out” is a masterclass in humanist neorealism - with the most minimal of gestures telling stories on themes known the world over.
text:
Łukasz Mańkowski
Tsou Shih-Ching
A film director and producer originally from Taiwan, who has been making films in the United States for many years. After her debut, “Take Out,” co-directed with Sean Baker, she spent years working as a producer, overseeing some of the American filmmaker’s most important projects — including “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project.” She recently completed “Left-Handed Girl,” a long-awaited film set entirely in Taipei, which she had been developing for nearly two decades.
2004 Take Out
2025 Left-Handed Girl
