A great documentarist makes his first foray into narrative feature filmmaking with this stark and ferocious look at survival under appalling conditions. China, October 1960. At the Jiabiangou labour camp in the Gobi desert, condemned rightists are sent for rehabilitation. Their task: digging a seemingly endless ditch between nowhere and nowhere. Their food supply dwindles to nothing, as a woman comes searching for her husband, one of the labourers. Cinematography by Lu Sheng, whose directorial debut, Here, There, is also screening at EIFF. The filmmaker will be in attendance and will also discuss his work in depth in a masterclass.