Hou Hsiao-hsien (Chinese: 侯孝賢; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hâu Hàu-hiân; born 8 April 1947) is a retired Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor.

[4][5] Hou was voted "Director of the Decade" for the 1990s in a poll of American and international critics by The Village Voice and Film Comment.

[6] In a 1998 New York Film Festival worldwide critics' poll, Hou was named "one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema.

Internationally, Hou is known for his austere and aesthetically rigorous dramas dealing with the upheavals of Taiwanese (and occasionally larger Chinese) history of the past century by viewing its impacts on individuals or small groups of characters.

A City of Sadness (1989), for example, portrays a family caught in conflicts between the local Taiwanese and the newly arrived Chinese Nationalist government after World War II.

His storytelling is elliptical and his style marked by extreme long takes with minimal camera movement but intricate choreography of actors and space within the frame.

He uses extensive improvisation to arrive at the final shape of his scenes and the low-key, naturalistic acting of his performers.

His compositions are decentered, and links between shots do not adhere to an obvious temporal or causal narrative logic.

Without abandoning his famous austerity, his imagery has developed a sensual beauty during the 1990s, partly under the influence of his collaboration with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing.

Hou was voted "Director of the Decade" for the 1990s in a poll of American and international critics put together by The Village Voice and Film Comment.

The film deals with themes reminiscent of Ozu—tensions between parents and children and between tradition and modernity—in Hou's typically indirect manner.

His 2005 film Three Times features three stories of love set in 1911, 1966 and 2005 using the same actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen.

Filmed and financed entirely in France, Flight of the Red Balloon (2007) is the story of a French family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese student.

Hou has also had some acting experience, appearing as the lead in fellow Taiwanese New Wave auteur Edward Yang's 1984 film Taipei Story.

Hou also had a small role in the 2013 Chinese comedy-drama film Young Style, about a group of teenagers in high school.

Hou's first film as a director, as well as writer, was Cute Girl (1980) or Lovable You, a relatively formulaic romantic comedy (prevalent in Taiwan at the time) starring Kenny Bee, Anthony Chan and Feng Fei-fei.

[10] The film was primarily devised as a vehicle for Bee and Feng, who were popular pop-stars in Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively, at the time.

[14] The film starred now-director Doze Niu as Ah-Ching, as a member of a gang of young boys who have finished school in their island fishing village of Fengkuei and spend most of their days fighting and drinking.

The film won the Golden Montgolfiere award (tied with Wanderers of the Desert (1984)) at the 1984 Nantes Three Continents Festival.

Hou's eighth feature film concerns the story of a girl (played by Taiwanese pop star Lin Yang) who works at a Kentucky Fried Chicken location in Taipei to support her family, which includes a brother character (played by Jack Kao) who is involved in crime and gangs.

It is also the very first film to openly deal with the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang (KMT) after taking Taiwan over from the Japanese in 1945 following WWII, and the tragic February 28 Incident (1947), where thousands of Taiwanese citizens were killed.

Starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as the deaf-mute but all-seeing Wen-ching and his older brother Wen-leung (Jack Kao), the film dealt with political subject matter involving the February 28 Incident and the "White Terror" era where countless Taiwanese citizens were incarcerated and shot by the KMT government in the late 1940s after their displacement from China to Taiwan after the Civil War of 1949.

Hou's eleventh film was a post-modern time-jumping and fourth-wall breaking narrative that jumped between the modern-day life of an actress named Liang Ching (played by Annie Shizukah Inoh) and the historical role of Chiang Bi-Yu, who she was portraying in a 1940s period piece film.

[20] Goodbye South, Goodbye, Hou's twelfth film, was set in rural Taiwan and concerned the lives of Taipei petty criminals played by Giong Lim, Shih-huang Chen, Vicky Wei, Jack Kao, Annie Shizukah Inoh (the latter two actors who Hou reunited with from Good Men, Good Women (1995)).

The screenplay was written and translated by acclaimed novelist Eileen Chang, along with frequent Hou screenwriter collaborator Chu T’ien-wen, based on a novel by Bangqin Han.

The film also starred Carina Lau, Michiko Hada, Vicky Wei, Annie Shizukah Inoh, Rebecca Pan and Ming Hsu.

The film was also nominated for three awards at the 1983 Golden Horse Film Festival: Best Supporting Actor (Chen Bor-jeng who appeared in Hou's segment The Sandwich Man), Best Child Star (Ching-Kuo Yan - who appeared in the Taste of Apples segment), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Wu Nien-jen).

Hou has acted in four films, including starring as the main character "Lung" in fellow Taiwanese New Wave auteur Edward Yang's Taipei Story (1985), which was perhaps Yang trying to return the favor for Hou casting him in his film A Summer at Grandpa's (1984).

[citation needed] Although he rarely discusses politics in public, Hou was a supporter of the now disbanded Democratic Action Alliance [zh] (民主行動聯盟)[37] which advocates for Chinese unification.