"the assassin" (2015) was hou's eighteenth feature film and garnered him the best director award at the 2015 cannes film festival, where composer giong lim also won the cannes soundtrack award. the film also swept the 2015 golden horse film festival and awards, winning a grand total of five awards: best director, best feature film, best cinematography (ping bin lee), best makeup & costume design (wen-ying huang), and best sound effects (duu-chih tu, shih yi chu, shu-yao wu).> the film was also nominated for 5 additional golden horse awards: best leading actress (shi qu), best adapted screenplay (cheng ah, chu t’ien-wen and hai-meng hsieh), best art direction (wen-ying huang), best original film score (giong lim) and best film editing (ching-song liao). the film was also nominated for a bafta award for "best foreign language film", but lost to "wild tales".