Friday, April 26 | 8 pm
Saturday, April 27 | 5:30 pm
Sunday, April 28 | 5:30 pm
The year is 2001, and China is just beginning to experience the massive upheavals that would transform the Communist country into a global economic superpower. Qiao, a sharp-witted beauty, loves local gangster Bin. During a fight between Bin’s gang and their rivals, Qiao fires an illegal handgun to save her lover’s life. Qiao receives and serves a five-year prison sentence, before tracking down Bin in the picturesque Three Gorges region. The latest masterwork from Jia Zhangke (The World, A Touch of Sin), the great cinematic chronicler and poet of a newly capitalistic China, Ash Is Purest White unfolds in three parts with each focusing on Qiao and Bin as their diverging lives intersect at different key moments in their country’s latter-day history. More melodrama than gangster film, this 2018 Cannes Film Festival highlight is a major achievement not only for Jia, but for the entirety of contemporary Chinese cinema.
Director Jia Zhangke | 2018 | In Mandarin with English subtitles | 141 minutes | NR | DCP