In rural early 90's China, Bai (Lu Huang), a pretty and enterprising college student, travels to a remote, mist shrouded mountain village in the company of a pair of affable strangers. But what Bai thought was an expedition to gather herbs for resale turns into a "true crime shocker" (NY Times) when her fellow travelers sell her into slavery. "This can't be happening!" Bai screams on awakening from a drugged stupor to find herself "mar-' ried" to a middle-aged pig farmer, and her freedom, identity, and dignity stolen.

Yang's "hard-to-shake drama"(NY Times) depicts Bai's horrific ordeal with both gravity and the kind of "stunningly realistic" (New Yorker) detail that emphasizes the authenticity of the all too common predicament that she fights to escape. Contrasting the exotic beauty of its locale and a "very fine lead turn by Lu Huang" (Time Out London) with the cruelty of a system that tolerates human trafficking and a community that thrives on it, Blind Mountain premiered to "a thunderclap of applause and cheers from the audience" (Time) at the Cannes Film Festival.