Winner of the Best Director prize for Hou Hsiao-hsien at the 2015 Cannes film festival, The Assassin is a work of exceptional beauty. Ostensibly a wuxia set in the ninth-century Tang dynasty, it is poetic and enigmatic, a Hou film through and through, making use of long takes, stillness, and stunning landscapes lensed by the talented cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin and starring Shu Qi in a standout performance. “A mesmerizing slow burn of a martial-arts movie that boldly merges stasis and kinesis, turns momentum into abstraction, and achieves breathtaking heights of compositional elegance” (Justin Chang, Variety).