In 1993, he made his first film Weekend Lover, but it was not released until two years later, having its world premiere at the International Filmfestival Mannheim-Heidelberg where it received the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Award.

Between completion and premiere of Weekend Lover he made and released Don't Be Young, a thriller about a girl who takes her nightmares as real, in 1994.

Upon its release, international audiences praised Suzhou River, which several critics felt evoked Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, particularly in how both films focus on a man obsessed with a mysterious woman.

In order to circumvent the ban, his next film, Spring Fever, was shot surreptitiously in Nanjing and registered as a Hong Kong-French coproduction to avoid censors.

[11] Later, after Lou submitted Summer Palace to the 2006 Cannes Film Festival without approval from Chinese censors, he was banned from film-making again, this time for five years.