Hsiao-Peng becomes pregnant, but her boyfriend refuses to take responsibility, leading her to attempt suicide. After being rescued, she ends up in an unmarried mothers’ shelter run by Madam Pai. There, she interacts with various women who are in the shelters for many different reasons. As her due date approaches, Hsiao-Peng and the women at the shelter face decisions about their futures. Unmarried Mothers, a 1980 film by Lee Mi-mi, is part of the Taiwan Urban Women Trilogy, including Evening News and Girls’ School (1982), screened at SIWFF last year. Although Unmarried Mothers does not explicitly deal with queer themes like Girls’ School, it shares the common theme of portraying women’s community stories that address serious social issues within the framework of melodrama. The film’s main subject is unwed pregnancy. While it provides a relatively safe romantic and happy ending for the protagonist, the film examines the multiple oppressions young women face in 20th-century East Asian society. Unlike many melodramas of its time, Hsiao-Peng and her friends do not fall into unnecessary sentimentality and guilt but instead choose their paths independently. [Djuna]