Ash Is Purest White

Beautiful Qiao leaves a poor mining town to try her luck in the big city. She falls in love with Bin, a shady mafioso. Their relationship has its ups and downs, but Qiao does not give up – she knows what she wants. Their stormy love story spans seventeen years against the backdrop of a fast-changing China. Drawing on Wuxia, the traditional literary genre of martial arts, director Jia Zhang-Ke (A Touch of Sin) revisits China as it undergoes rapid Westernization, and the Chinese who grope in the dark for a new identity. From within China’s underworld, Qiao and Bin also search for meaning and take extreme measures to reinstate tradition while conceding to the modern dictates imposed upon them.