Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien

With their hypnotic long takes and elliptical narrative structures, the dreamily enveloping films of Taiwanese cinema titan Hou Hsiao-hsien seem to reshape the rules of time, drifting languorously through the ever-changing sociopolitical realities of Taiwan past and present. Beginning his career with the charming, commercial romantic comedies CUTE GIRL and THE GREEN, GREEN GRASS OF HOME, he came into his own with his fourth feature, the poignant, more naturalistic coming-of-age drama THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI. With later triumphs like FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI and MILLENNIUM MAMBO—sublimely sensorial reflections on the passage of history at the end of the nineteenth and dawn of the twenty-first centuries, respectively—Hou firmly established himself as one of world cinema’s foremost masters, capable of rendering profound emotional states with the subtlest of strokes.