Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of the filmmakers to emerge from the various new Asian cinemas of the mid-1990s, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang has found significant critical acclaim for his spare postmodern allegories of contemporary life. His second film, Vive L'Amour, won the coveted Lion d’Or in Venice in 1994, and his next feature, The River, earned him a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. His work has drawn comparison to the existential films of Antonioni and Bresson on the one hand, and to the urban comedies of Jacques Tati on the other. His recurrent subject is the human condition, the solitary nature of individual lives, the rituals that engender survival, and the restorative powers of love.