As Jia's biggest budget movie to date, Ash Is Purest White also stars Chinese cinematic heavyweights Feng Xiaogang, Xu Zheng, Zhang Yibai and Diao Yinan.

The crew traveled around 7,000 kilometers to shoot sequences in Shanxi province, the Three Gorges area and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Despite being widely recognized as one of the country's top directors, Feng－who won the best actor award at the 52nd Golden Horse Awards in 2015 for his starring role in Mr Six－plays a Chinese-medicine practitioner who is a master of acupuncture.

Xu, known for his roles in the blockbusters Lost in Thailand and Lost in Hong Kong, plays a sci-fi novelist, a character loosely based on Liu Cixin, the first Asian author to win the Hugo Award, according to Jia.

"In recent years, I've been spending most of the time in my hometown (in Shanxi province) and sci-fi ideas have often come to mind," explains Jia.

With an increasing interest to explore the meaning of time and space, Jia writes Xu's character as an eloquent novelist who is enthusiastic about outer space and he also created a sequence that features actress Zhao's character marveling at the vast starry sky in Xinjiang.

"I wanted to shoot a movie that was more like a novel, which covers a long time span and features complex characters," says Jia, adding that time will help audiences to understand the protagonists and their struggles.