Director: Ann Hui

‘A Simple Life’ is the perfect marriage of arthouse style and heart-rending substance.

‘Our Time Will Come’ is another excellent Ann Hui film, but it’s Zhou Xun’s aptitude that lingers after the running time ends.

Its gritty, truthful tone and flawless cast manage to take a sub-genre fraught with cliché and melodrama and give it a provocative resonance that is so very precious.

‘Swordsman’ is not as strong as its superior sequel and the aforementioned difficulties are all apparent, but it is still an ultimately rewarding film.

‘The Postmodern Life Of My Aunt’ is expertly made, superbly shot and mostly involving. Yet there’s something missing in this odyssey of an elderly woman’s experiences in the city.

Ann Hui’s version of Emperor Chien Lung isn’t a masterpiece, but is certainly worthy viewing – far more so than ‘The Emperor And His Brother’.

‘The Way We Are’ is a gentle production about an act of kindness flowering into a friendship and how simple events can create a long-standing link between people who are initially strangers.

Indebted to ‘The Sixth Sense’ it may be, but ‘Visible Secret’ eschews the surreal shocks of current Japanese and Korean horror cinema.