Profound and lyrical, the first film in over a decade from cinematic poet Bui Thac Chuyen (Adrift) spins a mesmerizing tale of life, love, loneliness and pyromania in yesteryear’s Mekong Delta. Based on short stories by renowned female author Nguyen Ngoc Tu, Glorious Ashes intertwines the fates of two young wives and their deadbeat husbands with an older woman who begins living with an ex-con. Breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly poignant, the saga is nearly ethnographic in the authenticity of its details, with fire and water depicted frequently and magnificently in all their extremes and visual power. Both transgressive and transcendent, the film is a triumphant reflection of the resilience of womanhood in a less modern world, and a scorching condemnation of the inequities of the patriarchal society.