Return to Dust

Time is essential in both cinema and farming according to director Li Ruijun, who returns to his familiar hometown in rural China to tell the story of Ma and Cao, two lonely middle-aged people who are pushed into an arranged marriage. Faced with the adversity of nature and farm life, the couple seeks to understand the Earth’s cycles and find harmony in the ever-changing challenges of the farming process, as their own bond begins to blossom. Ruijun brings to the screen the virtues and simple pleasures of a traditional way of rural life, in a graceful, subtle, and soulful film that poetically underscores the bond between humans and the land in a fast-changing China.