Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Raise the Red Lantern

In 1920s China, a nineteen year old Songlian is forced to marry the much older lord of a powerful family. With three wives already, each living in a separate chamber in the mansion, they constantly play mind games for his attention. Songlian joins the fierce competition, slowly uncovering the dark truths that lie within their gilded cage.

To Each His Own Cinema

A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.

Taipei Story

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

Old Fox

Set in the late 1980s, this family drama is about an 11-year-old boy who befriends his landlord, nicknamed Old Fox, and learns from him how to survive in a rapidly changing world as well as things his poor father would never be able to teach him.

The Assassin

9th century China. 10-year-old general’s daughter Nie Yinniang is abducted by a nun who initiates her into the martial arts, transforming her into an exceptional assassin charged with eliminating cruel and corrupt local governors. One day, having failed in a task, she is sent back by her mistress to the land of her birth, with orders to kill the man to whom she was promised – a cousin who now leads the largest military region in North China. After 13 years of exile, the young woman must confront her parents, her memories and her long-repressed feelings.

Millennium Mambo

The youthful Vicky is torn between two men, Hao-Hao and Jack. At night she works as a PR person at a night club to support both of them. Hao-Hao keeps vigilance over her all the time, no matter she is on or off the job. He checks her charge accounts, telephone bills, mobile phone records, and even her body odor in an attempt to trace Vicky’s activities. She cannot stand him any longer; she runs away.

The Time to Live and the Time to Die

An autobiographical film based on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's memories of his youth growing up in Taiwan after emigrating from mainland China.

A City of Sadness

The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror", mainland China's political repression that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government in the late 1940s.

Dust in the Wind

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.