Return To Dust, an arthouse hit in China last summer before being pulled from release, opens Stateside this weekend with Film Movement presenting on two screens – NYC’s Bam Rose Cinema and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, expanding to LA and Seattle next Friday.
The distributor acquired the film directed by Li Ruijun after it premiered in Berlin in March, 2022 to glowing reviews, see Deadlines’s here. Hai Quing and Wu Renlin star as a middle-aged couple in a rural province encouraged to marry by their families, who see them as a burden. Love and respect slowly as they scratch out a living of extreme hardship working the land. A 95% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
First released last July in China, it played unusually well for an arthouse title there and appeared on streaming platforms in early September before disappearing later that month without explanation.
Regulators don’t...
The distributor acquired the film directed by Li Ruijun after it premiered in Berlin in March, 2022 to glowing reviews, see Deadlines’s here. Hai Quing and Wu Renlin star as a middle-aged couple in a rural province encouraged to marry by their families, who see them as a burden. Love and respect slowly as they scratch out a living of extreme hardship working the land. A 95% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
First released last July in China, it played unusually well for an arthouse title there and appeared on streaming platforms in early September before disappearing later that month without explanation.
Regulators don’t...
- 7/21/2023
- by Jill Goldsmith
- Deadline Film + TV
The Good Earth: Ruijun Crafts Poignant Portrait of Transformative Love
Director Li Ruijun returns to familiar themes in his sixth feature, Return to Dust, a touching odyssey concerning two woebegone people cultivating a relationship with each other and the land, once again taking place in his native hometown of Gaotai in the northern province of Gansu. A showcase for his regular collaborator Wu Renlin (who previously starred in Ruijun’s The Old Donkey and Fly with the Crane), it’s also a transformative role for celebrated actor Hai Quing. Together they anchor the film’s cathartic energies despite significant trauma and despair, and a tendency for the film’s metaphors sometimes feeling unduly pronounced.…...
Director Li Ruijun returns to familiar themes in his sixth feature, Return to Dust, a touching odyssey concerning two woebegone people cultivating a relationship with each other and the land, once again taking place in his native hometown of Gaotai in the northern province of Gansu. A showcase for his regular collaborator Wu Renlin (who previously starred in Ruijun’s The Old Donkey and Fly with the Crane), it’s also a transformative role for celebrated actor Hai Quing. Together they anchor the film’s cathartic energies despite significant trauma and despair, and a tendency for the film’s metaphors sometimes feeling unduly pronounced.…...
- 7/21/2023
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
In the realm of Chinese independent cinema, the weight of influence can be felt as heavily as the often capricious and inscrutable government censorship system. Unique among the most significant new waves across the cinematic world, mainland China possesses both a definable new wave in the form of the vaunted Fifth Generation, whose luminaries included Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, and an equally clear countermovement in the form of the Sixth Generation, which comprised Jia Zhang-ke and Wang Xiaoshuai, among others.
Broadly speaking, the Sixth Generation filmmakers responded to the Fifth Generation’s fondness for florid aesthetic style, period pieces, and melodramatic narratives by embracing more rough-hewn, neorealist productions shot on the fly in contemporary China. While Chinese cinema has perhaps not reached the same level of (relatively) mainstream ubiquity as it possessed during the Fifth Generation’s reign in the late 1980s and early ’90s, it’s arguably the...
Broadly speaking, the Sixth Generation filmmakers responded to the Fifth Generation’s fondness for florid aesthetic style, period pieces, and melodramatic narratives by embracing more rough-hewn, neorealist productions shot on the fly in contemporary China. While Chinese cinema has perhaps not reached the same level of (relatively) mainstream ubiquity as it possessed during the Fifth Generation’s reign in the late 1980s and early ’90s, it’s arguably the...
- 7/20/2023
- by Ryan Swen
- Slant Magazine
"The soil rewards us. Whether you're rich or powerful or an ordinary person." Film Movement debuted an official US trailer for this indie film from China titled Return to Dust, from the award-winning filmmaker named Ruijun Li. This originally premiered in early 2022 at the Berlin Film Festival and it toured to other fests including Melbourne, Edinburgh, Toronto, Mill Valley. A tender tale about the transformative nature of love, Return to Dust is an "absorbing, beautifully framed drama" that was already a box office hit in China when it opened last year. Humble, unassuming Ma and timid Cao have been cast off by their families and forced into an arranged marriage. They have to combine their strength and build a home to survive. In the face of much adversity, an unexpected and wholesome bond begins to blossom, as both Ma and Cao, uniting with the Earth's cycles, create a haven for...
- 7/17/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
One of the finest films to emerge from China in recent memory is finally set to hit North American movie screens. Chinese writer-director Li Ruijun’s lyrical realist drama Return to Dust, which premiered to acclaim at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2022, will begin rolling out in select cities July 21 courtesy of Film Movement.
A moving portrait of China’s disappearing rural way of life, Return to Dust, like much of Li’s work, is a triumph of indie filmmaking. The movie was shot on a shoestring in Gaotai, one of the poorest and most remote parts of China, where the director grew up. Many of those involved in the production were his relatives and other village locals — the male lead, Wu Renlin, is his uncle, a lifelong farmer — lending this social realist elegy a depth of authenticity that would be impossible to fake.
The film follows two middle-aged peasants,...
A moving portrait of China’s disappearing rural way of life, Return to Dust, like much of Li’s work, is a triumph of indie filmmaking. The movie was shot on a shoestring in Gaotai, one of the poorest and most remote parts of China, where the director grew up. Many of those involved in the production were his relatives and other village locals — the male lead, Wu Renlin, is his uncle, a lifelong farmer — lending this social realist elegy a depth of authenticity that would be impossible to fake.
The film follows two middle-aged peasants,...
- 6/28/2023
- by Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Li Ruijun’s film, set in his home province of Gansu, brings together two outcast farm workers who have been shunted off their land
Set in his home province of Gansu, Li Ruijun’s golden-hued film is a heartbreaking tale of love and resilience in the face of societal indifference and change. With a cast largely made up of the director’s relatives as well as villagers from the landlocked province, this deeply personal work on the plight of rural farmers has a striking feel of authenticity and poetry.
Against the brutal reality of manual labour, the unlikely romance that develops between Ma (Wu Renlin) and Guiying (Hai Qing), two middle-aged outcasts herded into an arranged marriage by their apathetic siblings, is at once tender and fragile. Echoing a quote from the film, their existence is like the brittle wheat that gets listlessly blown in the wind. As a means to eradicate poverty,...
Set in his home province of Gansu, Li Ruijun’s golden-hued film is a heartbreaking tale of love and resilience in the face of societal indifference and change. With a cast largely made up of the director’s relatives as well as villagers from the landlocked province, this deeply personal work on the plight of rural farmers has a striking feel of authenticity and poetry.
Against the brutal reality of manual labour, the unlikely romance that develops between Ma (Wu Renlin) and Guiying (Hai Qing), two middle-aged outcasts herded into an arranged marriage by their apathetic siblings, is at once tender and fragile. Echoing a quote from the film, their existence is like the brittle wheat that gets listlessly blown in the wind. As a means to eradicate poverty,...
- 10/31/2022
- by Phuong Le
- The Guardian - Film News
The drama has now gone to Germany and Austria.
German sales outfit M-Appeal has closed further deals on Li Ruijun’s Chinese title Return To Dust, one of the buzz films in the Berlinale competition earlier this year,
The drama has now gone to Germany and Austria, where it has been picked up by Rapid Eye Movies, and to New Cinema in Israel.
The sales come as the film continues to do brisk box office in China itself, according to M-appeal and the film’s producer Zhang Min. It was released in its home market by Kashi J.Q. Pictures...
German sales outfit M-Appeal has closed further deals on Li Ruijun’s Chinese title Return To Dust, one of the buzz films in the Berlinale competition earlier this year,
The drama has now gone to Germany and Austria, where it has been picked up by Rapid Eye Movies, and to New Cinema in Israel.
The sales come as the film continues to do brisk box office in China itself, according to M-appeal and the film’s producer Zhang Min. It was released in its home market by Kashi J.Q. Pictures...
- 7/25/2022
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
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