"The cinema that I like has a kind of simultaneity between conspicuousness, exteriority and content... If I were to compare film to music, I’d say that what interests me is more like the style of a fugue than that of an orchestral symphony. I like to create films in the same way as one would a fugue."

Hou Hsiao Hsien was born in China in 1947. The following year his family moved to Taiwan where he spent his childhood. He studied filmmaking at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts. Then, he worked as an assistant director to Li Hsing and Lai Cheng-Ying, and took turns directing. Soon, his talent is recognized: Green, Green Grass of Home (1981), his third film, was nominated for a Golden Horse Award in Taiwan, then The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and A Summer at Grandpa’s (1984) attracted international attention at the French Festival des 3 Continents. A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1985) was awarded at the Rotterdam Film Festival and received the International Critic’s prize in Berlin. Dust in the Wind (1986) and Daughter of the Nile (1987) are also acclaimed by the critics. In 1989, his A City of Sadness won the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival. The Puppetmaster (1993) won the Jury prize in Cannes. Most of his following films, Good Men, Good Women (1995), Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996), Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Millennium Mambo (2001), and Three Times (2005) were shown at the Festival de Cannes, where Flight of the Red Balloon opened Un Certain Regard in 2007. As a producer, Hou Hsiao Hsien has helped bring about classics as Edward Yang’s Taipei Story, Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern.

Fatih Akin was born in Hamburg in 1973 as son to Turkish Parents. He began studying Visual communications at the Hamburg College of Fine Arts in 1994. He directed his first full length feature film Short Sharp Shock in 1998. This film brings immediate success and several awards, including the Bronze Leopard at Locarno and the Bavarian Film Award for the Best Young Director. It was followed by the road movie In July I'm Juli in 2000, the one-hour documentary Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren in 2001, the emigration drama Solino in 2002 and his Golden Bear winning last feature film Head-On in 2004. In 2003 he founded his film production company Corazón International. In 2007, The Edge of Heaven presented in Competition at the Festival de Cannes is awarded the Best Screenplay Award. Fatih Akin today works as a scriptwriter, director and producer and occasionally also as an actor. He lives in Hamburg.

Bruno Dumont directed his first feature film at the age of thirty-eight: La vie de Jésus (1996), shot in Bailleul, where he was born. This film earned him immediate acclaim: it was selected for the Director's Fortnight, winning a Caméra d'Or Special Mention. Creating demanding, singular and raw works of cinema, Bruno Dumont returned to Cannes in 1999, in Competition, with L'humanité. He was awarded the Grand Prix and a double Best Performance prize for two of the films non-professional actors. Bruno Dumont moved away from Northern France to shoot Twenty-nine Palms in the Californian desert, a road movie that was selected for the Venice Mostra in 2003. In 2006, Flandres, a harsh film about the devastation caused by war, received the Grand Prix at the Festival de Cannes.