Ash is Purest White(HKAFF 2018)

In Competition, Cannes Film Festival

Toronto International Film Festival

Nominated for Best Leading Actress, Golden Horse Awards

Told in three acts over a span of two decades, Jia Zhangke’s melancholic jianghu saga about a tenacious woman’s complicated relationship with a gangster unfolds against the transformative backdrop of a rapidly developing and disappearing modern China. In a dreary mining town in 2001, Qiao fires shots to save her mobster boyfriend Bin from an ambush. Her love and loyalty land her in jail. In 2006, Qiao returns from prison to find that the world has changed, and so has Bin’s heart. She makes the long journey to confront him. In the present day, Qiao and Bin find their way back to each other in their hometown, but the latter is a shadow of his former self.