Goodnight Mommy

People usually believe that focusing on academics and getting a higher educational degree ensures career readiness. However, will the students be able to remember their passion in learning and keep exploring their potential while complying with this belief? This film is a story of a group of Taiwanese alternative school students and their struggle when facing this conventional belief. By tracing their journey from junior high school to college, the director of this film--a 14-year-old alternative school student, YiFan, realized that high-stake testing and the tracking system might be the reason his friends are losing their motivation in learning and the courage to discover their own calling. YiFan even experimented on himself in this conventional system and found himself trapped in this game. —Anonymous Achieving in tests is like having diet shakes." Said 15-year old LiAnn, "You feel plenty, but their nutrition is actually empty." From Adler's eyes, this best friend of his is a prodigy. Not only his mind is always full of philosophical thoughts -- from the nature of the cosmos to the future of society, he's also a genius in learning everything -- from making robots, animation, to playing jazz impromptu. However, LiAnn never bothers to "study". He left the conventional school system to pursue freedom in the alternative school Adler also attends. But unavoidably, LiAnn is about to face the life-determining high-stakes test -- The Basic Competence Test. Concerned, 14-year-old Adler starts to videotape LiAnn and other classmates to see how they will perform while the school is so different. Strikingly, all of his friends are giving up their passions and dreams for a "safer path". Even LiAnn. Why? While having the option to opt-out and homeschool, Adler decides to follow their steps as an experiment, but eventually gets trapped as well..