The Assassin

Acclaimed director Hou Hsiao-hsien returns with a breathtaking martial-arts epic in which an assassin accepts a dangerous mission to kill a political leader she was previously engaged to.

Synopsis: In 8th-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 the 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, her memories, and her long-repressed feelings in a choice to sacrifice the man she loves or break forever with the sacred way of the righteous assassins.

“Another of the Taiwanese master’s inimitably oblique, realist and ravishing wide-shot triumphs.” ~ Roger Clarke, Sight & Sound.

“Hou Hsiao-hsien’s painterly tale of Tang dynasty intrigue is a magnificent blend of fleet-footed action dark magic and emotional realism.” - Mark Kermode, The Guardian.