Video & On Demand - Ash is Purest White (DVD/Blu-ray/Download)
Born in 1970 (Fengyang, Shanxi Province), Jia Zhang-ke studied painting, developed an interest in fiction, and in 1995 founded the Youth Experimental Film Group, for which he directed two award-winning videos.
He graduated in 1997 from the Beijing Film Academy, and has since directed many short, documentary and feature-length films. His first feature, Xiao Wu (1998) was selected at at the Berlin Film Festival. The following films Zhantai (Platform, 2000), and Ren xiao yao (Unknown Pleasures, 2002) were selected in competition respectively at Venice and Cannes. He established Xstream Pictures in 2003 in order to promote young talented directors from all over China. Sanxia haoren (Still Life) received the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival 2006. Since he has made Er Shi Si Cheng Ji (24 City, 2008, distributed by New Wave Films), Hai shang chuan qi (I Wish I Knew, 2010), Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Best Screenplay, Cannes 2013).
Mountains may Depart (2015) and Ash is Purest White (2018) were also both in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.| Xiao Shan Goes Home (1995) short film |
| Du Du (1995) short film |
| Xiao Wu (1997) |
| Platform (2000) |
| In Public (2001) short documentary. |
| Unknown Pleasures (2002) |
| The World (2004) |
| Dong (2006) documentary |
| Still Life (2006) |
| Useless (2007) documentary |
| 24 City (2008) |
| I Wish I Knew (2010) documentary |
| A Touch of Sin (2013) |
| Mountains May Depart (2015) |
| Ash is Purest White (2018) |
| CAST | |
| Qiao | ZHAO Tao |
| Bin | LIAO Fan |
| XU Zheng | |
| Casper LIANG | |
| Special Appearance | |
| FENG Xiaogang | |
| DIAO Yinan | |
| ZHANG Yibai | |
| DING Jiali | |
| ZHANG Yibai | |
| DONG Zijian | |
| CREW | |
| Director | JIA Zhang-Ke |
| Script | JIA Zhang-Ke |
| Produced by | Shozo ICHIYAMA |
| Coproduced by | ZHANG Dong |
| XIANG Shaokun | |
| Juliette SCHRAMECK | |
| Associate producers | WANG Tianyun |
| Josie CHOU | |
| WAN Jiahuan | |
| ZHAO Yijun | |
| LIU Zhe | |
| Music | Music LIM Giong |
| Production manager | ZHANG Dong |
| First assistant director | WANG Jing |
| Director of photography | Eric GAUTIER, A.F.C. |
| Editing | Matthieu LACLAU |
| LIN Xudong | |
| Sound designer | ZHANG Yang |
| Sound mixer | Olivier GOINARD |
| Art director | LIU Weixin |
| Executive Producers | REN Zhonglun |
| JIA Zhang-Ke | |
| DONG Ping | |
| Nathanaël & Elisha KARMITZ | |
| LIU Shiyu | |
| ZHU Weijie | |
| YANG Jinsong | |
| Production | SHANGHAI FILM GROUP CORPORATION |
| XSTREAM PICTURES (BEIJING) | |
| HUANXI MEDIA GROUP LIMITED (TAIZHOU) | |
| HUANXI MEDIA GROUP LIMITED (TIANJIN) | |
| MK PRODUCTIONS | |
| In coproduction with | ARTE FRANCE CINÉMA |
| With the participation of | ARTE FRANCE |
| BEIJING RUNJIN INVESTMENT | |
| WISHART MEDIA CO., LTD. | |
| ENCHANT (SHANGHAI) FILM & TELEVISION CULTURE CO | |
| China 2018 | |
| 135 mins | |
| 1.85 / 5.1 | |
"Ash is Purest White — a mob movie and a masterpiece about 21st-century China…
Jia Zhangke’s film boasts a richly novelistic plot and a stellar performance from Zhao Tao."
Danny Leigh, THE FINANCIAL TIMES
"Chinese gangster’s girlfriend drama is a marvel…China’s director supreme Jia Zhang-ke outdoes himself with a thorny tale about the impossibility of love…As ever, Zhao Tao puts in the best performance you’ll see this year."
Tara Brady, THE IRISH TIMES
★★★★"Throughout a story spanning almost 18 years, Zhao – Jia's off-screen partner and a regular in his films – is rock-solid, playing a born survivor who boasts street-smarts in spades…this is no ordinary gangster film but one that's filled with poignancy and longing."
James Mottram, THE LIST
"A sprawling portrait of a nation in flux. It spanS two decades and features murder, ballroom dancing and alien sightings, but is nonetheless laser-focused on its central protagonist.
Kevin Maher. THE TIMES
★★★★★
David Ehrlich, INDIEWIRE
"A deeply moving gangster love story… You are pulled in almost immediately by the beauty of the characterizations, the specificity of the milieu and the depth of feeling that courses beneath every exchange."
"Exquisite and ferocious...Beautiful, expansive and deeply melancholy drama...A sublime romantic tragedy."
Justin Chang, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Zhao Tao is Jia’s Joan Crawford, or his Gloria Grahame… whatever narratives ellipses Jia throws at her, Zhao Tao’s Qiao endures—through many reversals of fortune and changes of wardrobe."
Jonathan Romney, FILM COMMENT
"Jia Zhangke explores the masculine codes of his country and his own previous work in this ravishing, self-referential film about a woman in love with a mobster, with an astonishing lead performance from Zhao Tao."
"One of the most accomplished oeuvres in contemporary cinema."
"Magisterial film"
Giovanni Marchini Camia, SIGHT & SOUND
★★★★
"Jia Zhang-ke’s latest is an often glorious drama"
"With Ash is Purest White, the always surprising, habitually envelope-pushing film-maker Jia Zhang-ke gives us a complex romantic tragedy from China’s aspirational gangster-classes. "Peter Bradshaw, THE GUARDIAN
"Enthralling…one the most inventive and engaged directors of the 21st century.”
A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
"Jia is very much an industry unto himself. Perhaps his only contemporary is Zhao Tao, who first appeared in Jia’s 2000 film Platform and has been the most consistent human presence in his cinema since. Here, together, they display an astonishing level of artistic symbiosis, years of creative loyalty all channeled into a portrait of devotion betrayed, unrewarded, but nevertheless unbowed. When everyone else mouths off about the values of the jianghu code, Qiao listens, and takes them to heart. This is her delusional undoing, her tragedy, and, finally, her glory.”
Nick Pinkerton, ARTFORUM
★★★★
"Few film-makers are as observant or as poetic as Jia is about the passing of time..."
"…this sprawling epic is undeniably a gangster movie, but it is also something stranger and sadder, a haunting, transcendent and often downright weird meditation on transience, loyalty and the soul of modern China."
Nicholas Barber, BBC.COM
"Do not be gulled by the slow pace of Jia's stories; they are ceaselessly alive to his country's haste, as it rushes to erase and to construct, and his sympathies tilt to those uncertain souls who simply can't keep up."
Anthony Lane, THE NEW YORKER
★★★★
"The movie represents both the director and his lead actress at the peak of their powers."
Glenn Kenny, ROGEREBERT.COM
"There's a timeless quality to Qiao and Bin's relationship, to its elemental cycles of loyalty, power, and humiliation."
Bilge Ebiri, VILLAGE VOICE
"...subtly majestic drama”
Daniel Kasman, MUBI NOTEBOOK
Download pressbook
Download short trailer 59' 16/9 Instagram
Download 33 second teaser with quotes 1:1 ratio Instagram/Twitter
Interviews with Jia Zhang-ke in
Film Comment
Slant Magazine
Indiewire
Filmmaker Magazine
Variety
MUBI Notebook
Video interviews/masterclasses
Film Society of Lincoln Center - Directors Dialogue NYFF56
Film Society of Lincoln Center - release sneak preview
International Film Festival Rotterdam
Asia Society