Hou Hsiao-hsien

A City of Sadness (1989) is one of Hou's most significant works, depicting a Taiwanese family during the February 28 Incident. It was the first Taiwanese film to win the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Hou is celebrated for his use of extremely long takes, minimal camera movement, and elliptical storytelling that often omits key dramatic events. His style requires the viewer to piece together meaning from atmosphere and fragmented scenes rather than conventional narrative exposition.

Yes, Hou directed The Assassin (2015), a wuxia martial arts film set during the Tang Dynasty that won the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was his first venture into the wuxia genre and was reportedly decades in development.

The Taiwanese New Cinema emerged in the early 1980s as a movement rejecting the melodramatic and propagandistic films that had dominated Taiwanese cinema. Hou Hsiao-hsien, along with Edward Yang, was at the forefront of this movement, which emphasized realism, personal storytelling, and innovative film language.