During World War II a secret agent (Tang Wei) must seduce, then assassinate an official (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai. Her mission becomes clouded when she finds herself falling in love with the man she is assigned to kill.

Ang Lee was born in Pingtung County in Southern Taiwan. The son of a high school principal with very traditional ideas about education, Lee chose a less conventionally academic path which led him to America to study theater at the University of Illinois. He went on to get an M.F.A. in film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, producing a prize-winning thesis film which resulted in some interest from Hollywood and many years in development hell. Then one day in 1990, Lee walked through the doors of the fledgling independent production company Good Machine with the script and a shoe string budget that would turn out to be his first feature, Pushing Hands. Ang Lee’s films include The Wedding Banquet (Golden Bear), Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility (Golden Bear), The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Oscar, Best Foreign Film), Hulk, Brokeback Mountain (Golden Lion, and Oscar, Best Director), Lust, Caution (Golden Lion), Taking Woodstock, Life of Pi (Oscar, Best Director), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and Gemini Man. Ang Lee lives in New York with his wife.

IND/EX, a national convening of the independent film exhibition ecosystem, is thrilled to partner with the Music Box Theatre on this screening of LUST, CAUTION as part of its conference programming this week in Chicago.