Ash Is Purest White

Ash Is Purest White is set in Datong, an industrial city in China's Shanxi province, in 2001. Qiao, a young dancer, is involved with Guo Bin, a local gangster. When Bin is ambushed by a rival group, Qiao fires a gun to protect him. The weapon brings her a five-year prison sentence, which she serves without ever naming Bin to the authorities. On her release she goes looking for him, and their reunion does not go as she hoped.

Jia Zhangke directed and wrote the film, which arrived in 2018 as his eighth narrative feature, following Mountains May Depart in 2015. Zhao Tao, a regular lead in his work, plays Qiao, with Liao Fan as Bin; the supporting cast includes Diao Yinan, Ding Jiali, Dong Zijian and Xu Zheng. The film runs 136 minutes and was produced by Shozo Ichiyama, with backing from companies in China, France and Japan.

On IMDb, Ash Is Purest White holds a critics' rating of 8.1/10 from 158 reviews, clearly above the 6.9/10 it averages on TMDB from 369 votes, a gap that suggests reviewers responded to the film more strongly than general viewers did. It is a crime drama with a romantic thread at its centre.