In rural China, two middle-aged singletons are cast off by their families and forced into an arranged marriage. What seems at first like an odd and doomed relationship gradually blossoms into a tender companionship as they both build a home together. While navigating topics such as the exploitation of farm workers and forced urbanisation, Li Ruijun’s hypnotic drama is also a poetic and humane portrait of unlikely love.

Reviews

‘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 Observer

‘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 FT