52nd Golden Horse Awards Winners

Last Saturday night was the 2015 Golden Horse Awards ceremony and as expected the big winner of the night was Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin that collected five awards, including Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography and more. Following closely was Chang Tso-Chi's Thanatos, Drunk with four awards.

Worth mentioning is Jia Zhang-ke's Mountains May Depart winning Best Original Screenplay and Tharlo by Pema Tseden winning Best Adapted Screenplay.

Winners for main categories are below in *BLUE. To check winners in all categories go official site here.

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10/1/15
Today organizers announced the nominations for the annual cinema awards and this year there were 427 submissions (153 feature films, 4 animation feature, 200 short films and 70 documentary, which is a big leap from last year's 364 submissions. Seventy-one (71) films made the second-round shortlist and 39 films (including shorts) were finally nominated.

Worth mentioning is that Outstanding Taiwanese Filmmaker of the Year Award goes to Hou Hsiao-Hsien. The Jury would like to acknowledge Hou’s dedication to film art as well as to the film industry, and he is also the soul of remarkable The Assassin. His achievement and uncompromising perseverance brings Taiwanese cinema to the international stage and sets an example for all filmmakers. The Lifetime Achievement Award this year goes to Li Li Hua.

Believe that is no surprise when we learn that Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin leads the pack with 11 nominations but perhaps more interesting are the films that follow closely, Chang Tso-chi's Thanatos, Drunk with 10 nods and Philip Yung's Port of Call with 9 nods. Mainland China nominations are led by Jia Zhangke's Mountains May Depart with 7 nominations.

Last November, Taiwan's Ministry of Culture announced that any Mainland China film that wins Best Director and/or Best Film award can bypass Taiwan's ten-film China film quota. Mountains May Depart, which did not win a local release quota, will need to win one of the two categories to receive a local release. Believe that this fact makes the race between Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Jia Zhangke absolutely unfair for cinema lovers in Taiwan, sigh.

The following are the nominees for some categories.

Best Feature film
*刺客聶隱娘 Nie yin niang (The Assassin), Hou Hsiao-Hsien
踏雪尋梅 Port of Call, Philip Yung
山河故人 Shan he gun ren (Mountains May Depart), Jia Zhangke
ཐར་ལོ | 塔洛 Tharlo, Pema Tseden
醉・生夢死 Zui sheng meng si (Thanatos, Drunk), Chang Tso-chi

Best Animation Feature
*我和我媽媽 McDull: Me & My Mum, Brian Tse and Junmin Li
西遊記之大聖歸來 Xi you ji zhi da sheng gui lai (Monkey King: Hero is Back), Tian Xiao Peng

Best Documentary
32 + 4, Hau Chun Chan
Ming tian hui geng hao (On the Rim of the Sky), Hongjie Xu
*The Chinese Mayor, Hao Zhou
The Verse of Us, MeDoc producer
灣生回家 Wansei Back Home, Tanaka Mika

Best Short Film
*Bao quanyuan zhi si (The Death of a Security Guard), Cheng Wei Hao
Filial Piety Award, Chen Jian-zhang
Ri guang zhi xia (Under the Sun), Qiu Yang
Time to Die, Tony Wang
Wu wu mian (No No Sleep), Tsai Ming-Liang

Best Director
Chang Tso-Chi for Thanatos, Drunk
*Hou Hsiao Hsien for The Assassin
Jia Zhang-ke for Mountains May Depart
Pema Tseden for Tharlo
Tsui Hark for The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3D

Best New Director
Alec Su for Zuo Er (The Left Ear)
*Bi Gan for Lu bian ye can (Kaili Blues)
Frankie Chen for Our Times
Lee Chung for Qingtian jie yi hao (The Laudryman)
Xiang Guoqiang for 少年巴比倫 Young Love Lost

Best Cinematography
Christopher Doyle for Port of Call
Hsu Chih-Chun and Chang Chih-Teng for Thanatos, Drunk
Lu Songye for Tharlo
*Mark Lee Ping-Bing for The Assassin
Yu Lik Wai for Mountains May Depart

To learn nominees in ALL categories go official site here. The awards ceremony will be on November 21st in Taipei, will be broadcast live on TTV.

The most interesting find comes from a documentary: The Verse of Us that has the most unexpected mix of poetry and literature with miners who happen to be migrant workers in China. "One typically does not associate poetry and literature to be written by manual workers – by miners spending their days 800m under the earth or workers assembling Apple iPhones. But there exists this rather prolific group of poets in China, who just also happen to be migrant workers." Most interested in watching this film.