It is up to Lin Hsiao-yang to take care of her pre-teen sister, who has already begun to steal, and a brother (Jack Kao) who is a burglar and gang member.
[4] [5] [5] The film's title is a reference to a character in a manga called Crest of the Royal Family who is hailed as Daughter of the Nile.
When it screened in January 1988 at the AFI Fest, The Washington Post wrote, "Hou Hsiao-hsien has the slickness that gives Daughter of the Nile the most East-West crossover appeal.
[8] When it aired at the Chicago International Film Festival in October, 1988, Lloyd Sachs of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote "slow and grudgingly revealing, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Daughter of the Nile" does not lend itself to easy description".
In December 2006 it screened as part of a Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective at the Canadian National Film Repository.