Best known internationally for his role as the disgruntled miner in Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin (2013), Jiang Wu was at the forefront of a new populist independent cinema in the 1990s with Zhang Yang's Shower (1999). Over 25 years, he has worked with directors as diverse as Zhang Yimou, Peter Chan and Yang Shupeng. Jiang attends NYAFF with Xin Yukun's western-noir Wrath of Silence in which, in a role reversal, he plays a corrupt mining magnate who meets his match in a mute worker. Jiang dominates the screen with his nuanced performance as a terrifying member of the nouveau riche.

After graduating from the Beijing Film Academy's photography department in 2009, Xin Yukun directed the short film Seven Nights (2010). Influenced by Paul Haggis' Crash, and similarly interweaving the fates of different characters, it displayed his playfulness with narrative structure. After developing the screenplay for three years, he directed his striking debut feature The Coffin In the Mountain, a twisty crime drama set in a remote Chinese village that made six times its budget at the China box office. He returns to rural China with the western-noir Wrath of Silence, set near his own hometown on the border of Mongolia.