Cert PG
9th. May 2024
2022 Golden Spike. Valladolid International Film Festival
Director : Li Ruijun
Cast: Hai-Qing and Wu Renlin
Country: China Chinese (English subs) 133 mins
UK release date: August 2022
In rural Gaotai county, two lonely, middle-aged outcasts are pushed into an arranged marriage by their families. Ma (Wu Renlin) is a humble farmer with little to offer his timid and sickly wife, Cao (Hai Qing), except for a small abandoned house on a barren patch of land. From just a few seeds, their newly planted crops take root and flourish; and similarly, an unexpected bond between the two starts to blossom. As seasons pass their dedication to each other grows stronger, but change and adversity soon threaten the idyllic existence they share.
“It’s a gorgeous, quietly affecting film that finds an unassuming beauty in this simple life in rural China, but which doesn’t shy away from the extreme hardships faced by the very poorest.” Wendy Ide, The Guardian.
“Return to Dust is many things — a vivid portrait of China’s hardscrabble rural north-west, an unexpected victim of state censorship — but it is first and last a love story.” Danny Leigh, The Financial Times.
Film Club at the Roxy 