Hou Hsiao-Hsien Filmography

To Each His Own Cinema

Crew: Director

Synopsis: At the time of its production, To Each His Own Cinema represented the latest arrival in a tidal wave of internationally oriented omnibus films, with no official relation between them but all produced within a few years of one another. Few could claim a roster of talent comparable to this one Read More

Three Times

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Shu Qi, Chang Chen

Synopsis: Millennium Mambo director Hou Hsiao-hsien explores the ever-changing cycle of love in this collection of three romantic stories set in 1911, 1966, and 2005 and utilizing the same actors in all three tales. In "A Time for Love," a fresh-faced soldier boy named Chen (Chang Chen) searches for a pool Read More

Reflections

Crew: Producer

Actors: Oy Gin, Nikki Shie, Tuan Chunhao, Lu Yi-ching, Jack Kao

Synopsis: A couple is torn by conflicting emotions in this drama from filmmaker Yao Hung-I. Jin (Oy Gin) and Mi (Nikki Shie) are two women living in Taiwan who have been lovers for some time; Jin is a singer in a rock band who suffers from severe mood swings and has been suffering from a fractured Read More

Café Lumiere

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Yo Hitoto, Tadanobu Asano, Masato Hagiwara, Kimiko Yo, Nenji Kobayashi

Synopsis: A freelance writer living in Tokyo defies social taboo by choosing life as a single mother in director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's meditative tribute to acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. When Yoko announces that she is pregnant and has no intentions of marrying the father of her child, her Read More

Millennium Mambo

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Shu Qi

Synopsis: Master filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien directs this look at life in modern Taipei, the first part of a planned series. The film opens with a vivacious lass named Vicky (Shu Qi) sauntering down a neon-lit tunnel as the voice-over describes how she is going to break up with her on and off boyfriend Hao Read More

Ming Dai Ahui Zhu

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Lee Jiunn-jye

Synopsis: A man finds his life taking a few unexpected turns after taking a spill off a motorbike in this engaging comedy-drama. After a serious motorcycle accident, Tung-ching (Lee Jiunn-jye) receives a scar on his hand that effectively erases his lifeline. Taking this as a sign from the fates, Tung-ching Read More

Flowers of Shanghai

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Michiko Hada, Michelle Reis, Carina Liu, Jack Kao

Synopsis: Hou Hsiao-hsien (Goodbye South, Goodbye) directed this Taiwanese-Japanese period drama set in the British section brothels of 19th-century Shanghai. Chu Tien-wen's screenplay was adapted from Han Ziyun's 1894 novel Haishang Huia Liezhuang (Biographies of Flowers of Shanghai), translated from the Read More

Goodbye South, Goodbye

Crew: Director

Actors: Jack Kao, Hsu Kuei-ying, Lim Giong

Synopsis: After spending much of the decade making films about Taiwan's complex and troubled history, Hou Hsiao Hsien turns his attention to its money-obsessed present with this gangster drama. Tattooed mobster, Kao (Jack Kao), and his quick-tempered, aptly named protégé, Flathead (Lim Giong), along with Read More

Heartbreak Island

Crew: Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This Taiwanese romantic drama has political overtones. It is the story of a radical political activist who was incarcerated 10 years ago for throwing bombs. In prison, Lin-lang sustains herself by keeping her political passions burning and by remaining devoted to her former lover, Wang Rong, who Read More

Good Men, Good Women

Crew: Director

Actors: Annie Shizuka Inoh

Synopsis: Hou Hsiao Hsien rounds out his loose trilogy on Taiwanese history -- The Puppet Master dealt with Japan's occupation of the island and City of Sadness focuses on Chiang Kai-shek's bloody occupation immediately following the war -- with this mediation on the anti-Communist campaign during the Read More

Zhi Yao Wei Ni Huo Yitian

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Veronica Yip, Amy Lee

Synopsis: Despite the fact that he has a perfectly fine girlfriend (Tracy Su), Ah-feng (Lin Chung) has grown obsessed with the charms of Tang (Veronica Yip). Unfortunately for him and all his friends, Tang is the mistress of Chao (ack Gao), the head of one of Taipei's more vicious gangs. Before long Read More

A Borrowed Life

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Tsai Chen-Nan, Tsai Chiou-Fong, Fu Jun, Peng Wan-Chun, Chang Li-Shu

Synopsis: This Taiwanese drama focuses on the strained relations between a father and son. It is set in a small mining village on the northern tip of Taiwan. This area owes it's development to Japan which once controlled it. The older residents of the town still hold the Japanese in high regard, but the Read More

The Puppetmaster

Crew: Director

Actors: Li Tian-lu, Yang Liyin

Synopsis: This Hou Hsiao Hsien masterpiece is a portrait of the childhood and adolescence of octogenarian Taiwanese puppet master and actor Li T'ien-lu, who narrates the film both off-screen and on-screen. In this second installment of a trilogy on Taiwanese life in the 20th century (City of Sadness is the Read More

Raise the Red Lantern

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Gong Li, He Caifei, Ma Jingwu, Cao Cuifeng, Jin Shuyuan, Kong Lin

Synopsis: The phenomenal success and international acclaim of Raise the Red Lantern, cemented Zhang Yimou's status as a leading figure in world cinema and reaffirmed the vibrancy of Chinese cinema. Though the film was the topic of great political controversy in China upon its release, it received armfuls Read More

Shaonian Ye, An La!

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Jack Kao

Synopsis: A-kuo and A-tou are teen-aged boys living in an industrial town in Taiwan. When they are not in school, they generally hang out with their buddy Hsiao Kao, a very stylish and charismatic younger gangster who enjoys their company and support. When one of Hsia Kao's gangland patrons is gunned down Read More

King of Chess

Crew: Associate Producer

Actors: Tony Leung Kar-Fai, Yang Lin, John Sham, Yim Ho

Synopsis: In Taipei, Taiwan, a television executive is helping the emcee of a television show about child prodigies prepare for a segment featuring a young chess prodigy. While he does this, he remembers a visit to the mainland at the time of the Cultural Revolution to visit a cousin. While traveling by Read More

City of Sadness

Crew: Director

Actors: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Jack Kao

Synopsis: Seen through the prism of the Lin family, this complex family drama from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao Hsien details a brief but crucial moment in Taiwanese history between 1945, when 50 years of Japanese colonial rule came to an end, and 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Kuomintang forces Read More

Dust in the Wind

Crew: Director

Actors: Hsin Shu-fen, Wong Jing Man, Mei Fang

Synopsis: Master filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien directs this wistful story about lost love and lost innocence among Taiwan's working class. Wan (Wang Chien-wen) and Huen (Hsin Shu-feng) are high school sweethearts living in a down-and-out mining community of Jio-fen in Taiwan's backwaters. Too poor to continue Read More

Daughter of the Nile

Crew: Director

Actors: Yang Lin, Kao Jai, Yang Fan, Li Tian-lu, Ts'ui Fu-Sheng

Synopsis: One glance at the 1989 Daughter of the Nile will convince the viewer that this is not the cheapjack 1969 American TV movie of the same name. Instead, this is a compelling Taiwanese drama about a wistful schoolgirl (Yang Lin) who is peripherally involved in a teen-aged crime ring. She escapes from Read More

Lao Niang Gou Sao

Actors: Deanie Ip, Elaine Jin, Jacky Cheng, Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Synopsis: A wife becomes a widow when her policeman husband commits suicide by jumping off the roof of his building at work. Shocked at his death, she is further surprised to discover he had a mistress and a four-year-old son in Taiwan. After an attempt on the widow's life, the mistress is murdered, leaving Read More

Ah-Fei

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Su Ming Ming

Synopsis: Old double standards and new equality for women clash head-on in this story about two generations: a mistreated but strong mother and her independent, educated daughter. Xiu Qin has an arranged marriage, is physically abused by her husband, and yet her family forces her to remain with him. In Read More

The Time to Live and the Time to Die

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: T'ien Feng, Mei Fang, T'ang Ju-yun, Yu An-Shun, Hsiao Ai

Synopsis: One of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's best-known films, this semi-autobiographical drama follows the childhood and teenage years of a young man named Ah-ha, as he comes of age in the Taiwan countryside. Though born on the Chinese mainland, Ah-ha moves to Taiwan at a very early age when his Read More

Taipei Story

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Tsai Chin, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Wu Nien-Chen, Ko Su-Yun

Synopsis: The disintegration of a relationship has undertones that find an echo in the possible disintegration of both the economy and the society in this intriguing tale from director Edward Yang. Qin (Cai Qin) has a high-paying job in a computer company, and her fiancé, Lon (Hou Xiaoxian), works in a Read More

A Summer at Grandpa's

Crew: Director

Actors: Wang Chi-Kwang, Lin Hsiao-Ling

Synopsis: Grandpa (Koo Chuen) and Grandma (Mei Fong) live in the fertile Taiwanese countryside. A boy (Wang Chi-Kwang) and his sister (Sun Cheeng-Lee) are packed off to their grandparents when their mother falls ill. Though relationships are strained at first, the boy and girl end up having a wonderful Read More

Zai Na Hepan Qingcao Qing

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this routine look at the activities inside a small country school, teacher Lu Danian (Kenny Bec) arrives in a rural community fired up with plans for the future and armed with new teaching techniques and methodologies. Along with his new life comes an unexpected romantic interest in one of the Read More

Sandwich Man

Crew: Director

Hsiao Pi Te Ku Shih

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This comedy-drama follows a young man as he changes from an intelligently aware youth, to a teenager with much less confidence than he once had, and finally, to a stable adult. Along the way, his mother remarries to obtain the financial security she needs for her family and the subsequent family Read More

The Boys From Fengkuei

Crew: Director

Actors: Niu Cheng-tse, Lin Hsiao-Ling, Chang Shih

Synopsis: In this ethnic drama with a sketchy storyline but an engaging sense of time and place, three young men leave their rural island homes looking for better economic opportunities and perhaps a little more excitement. From their listless life on the small island of Fenggui, off the coast of Taiwan Read More

Spring in Autumn

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kenny Bee

Synopsis: A very unhappy and desperate young woman (Joan Lin) -- pregnant and alone, discarded like so much wrapping paper by her ex-lover -- turns to the "Sad Sack" Cheng Wei (Kenny Bee) for help, nurturing, and advice -- should she get an abortion? That is the overriding issue, and poor Cheng Wei, who Read More

Fenger Tita Cai

Crew: Director

Jiushi Liuliu de Ta

Crew: Director