Ash Is Purest White

Visionary director Jia Zhang-Ke’s mesmerizing, decade-plus spanning journey through China’s criminal underworld features a tour-de-force performance from his frequent star Zhao Tao as Zhao Qiao, the swaggering girlfriend of low-level gangster Guo Bin (Liao Fan). Upon her release from a five-year prison sentence for protecting him in a fight, she finds herself navigating life in a rapidly changing, turn-of-the-millennium China—visualized by Jia as a landscape of surreal, almost science-fiction strangeness—as she embarks on an odyssey to reconnect with Bin. But what will she find? And who can she trust?