At the prime of their adolescence, Beigang delinquents A-Guo (Yan Zhenguo) and A-Dou (Tan Zhigang) spend their days idling at karaoke and billiard joints, indulging in narcotics and getting into petty fights. After rising through the ranks of the Taipei underworld, brother Jie (Jack Kao) returns to town to seek their help in avenging his boss’s death. Finding their place in the criminal world fuels the teenagers’ budding violent tendencies, driving them away from their small-town lives and down a cycle of bloodshed. Armed and reckless, the two make their way to the crime-ridden, neon-drenched Taipei, where innocence is as fragile as life.

A bold directorial debut by Hsu Hsiao-ming and produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Dust of Angels is a style-over-substance gangster piece amplified by its powerful cinematography and groundbreaking achievements in sound and music. It is the first Taiwanese film recorded in Dolby Stereo, spearheaded by the legendary sound engineer Tu Duu-chih. The then-unconventional alternative rock soundtrack earned Lim Giong his first Golden Horse nomination for Best Original Film Score. Its bluesy eponymous theme song also marked Wu Chun-lin’s first commercial release and paved his way to fame as Wu Bai.

M+ will present the film’s latest 4K restoration, which premiered in 2022.

Hsu Hsiao-ming (b. 1955, Taiwan) is a director and producer. He was the assistant director for Hou Hsiao-hsien's A Time To Live, A Time To Die (1985) and Patrick Tam’s Burning Snow (1988) before debuting as a writer-director with Dust of Angels (1992), which was the closing film of that year’s Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival. After directing an additional four feature films, Hsu switched his focus to producing, with his ventures including Olivier Assayas’s documentary HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (1997) and Yee Chih-yen's Blue Gate Crossing (2002).