Two pariahs – Lang (Eddie Peng), a taciturn ex-convict carrying guilt over the death of a colleague, and a scrawny stray dog carrying (it’s rumoured) rabies – find a kinship in this Cannes prize-winning Chinese drama. It’s a change of pace for director Guan Hu, best known for his blockbuster second world war epic The Eight Hundred (2020).

The location of this excellent, deliberately understated picture is key to the story: a blighted, partially abandoned town on the wind-lashed fringes of the Gobi desert in the north-west of the country, it’s a place that seems drained of everything, even colour. The striking widescreen photography looks as though it is etched in monochromes. But perhaps even more significant is when the film is set. The story unfolds just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a time of accelerated reinvention and redevelopment in China. The country is looking to the future – one that might not have a place for strays and outcasts such as the man and the mutt he befriends.

Lang returns to his home town to discover that his 10-year prison sentence has not erased him from the memories of the remaining townsfolk. Some offer him respect and free noodles in recognition of his former celebrity (he was a rock musician and a motorcycle stunt performer); others, such as local snake-meat farmer Butcher Hu, nurture longstanding grudges.

Peng’s performance is physically rather than verbally expressive – he has barely more lines of dialogue than the dog – but Lang’s arc of redemption is explored with heart and humour.

• In UK and Irish cinemas