French filmmaker Olivier Assayas delivers a loving portrait of a colleague and friend in this documentary about Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Through conversations with Hou and some of his friends, Assayas explores the director's youth in a small village, as well as the way Hou came up in the Asian film industry. Hou, in discussing his past, touches on the subjects that inform his work, along with the reasons he decided to dedicate his life to making movies.