This nearly three-hour long drama written and directed by Edward Yang tells about the lives of a Taipei middle-class family through three generations. The film moves at a very slow pace and seems to lack any climax but manages to present the day-to-day life as it is.

Yang's true-to-life observation won him plenty of prestigious honors across the world. He garnered the Best Director award at 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where the film debuted. He collected the best foreign language Film awards from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics in 2001, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards in 2000 and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards in 2000. "Yi Yi" was named one of the best films of 2001 by the many publications including USA Today, the New York Times, Newsweek and Film Comment. In 2002, the British Film Institute's magazine Sight and Sound selected the film as one of the top ten films of the past 25 years.