Hou Hsiao-hsien

With his first film in 8 years, legendary Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien wowed this year's Cannes Film Festival (where he won Best Director) with his awe-inspiring THE ASSASSIN - a wondrous take on the traditional wuxia film. The story is simple, if elusive - in 9th-century China, Nie Yinniang is a young woman who was abducted in childhood from a decorated general and raised by a nun who trained her in martial arts. After 13 years of exile, she is returned to the land of her birth as an exceptional assassin, with orders to kill her betrothed husband-to-be. She must confront her parents