Thousand Pieces of Gold 01/21 Blu-ray (Rental)

Set in a mining town in the 1880s, Thousand Pieces of Gold tells the real-life story of Lalu (Rosalind Chao, The Laundromat, The Joy Luck Club), a young Chinese woman whose desperately poor parents sell her into slavery. She is trafficked to a nefarious saloonkeeper in Idaho’s gold country. Eventually Charlie, a man of a different ilk, played by Chris Cooper (Adaptation, American Beauty), wins her in a poker game and slowly gains her trust. Way ahead of its time, the film resonates even more powerfully in the #MeToo era. But director Nancy Kelly became a victim of prejudice against women directors within the American film industry and was never offered another movie to direct in spite of extraordinary reviews, some of which compared her talent to that of John Ford. Based on the classic novel by Ruthanne Lum McCunn, and written for the screen by awardwinning filmmaker Anne Makepeace (Tribal Justice), Thousand Pieces of Gold is a breathtaking feminist Western just waiting to be rediscovered, and is presented here in a new 4K restoration.