She also produced Night Train, released in 2007, Knitting, in 2008 and Black Coal, Thin Ice in 2014, which won that year's Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
She says that she became aware that whilst filmmakers in China have good ideas and scripts, they lack the resources to produce or market their films for an international audience.
Qu says that the film reflects a changing reality in modern China, in which people have started to notice "little things that are happening", such as "the Internet and text messages being censored all the time", with social media services such as Facebook routinely inaccessible.
[9] Qu tells the depressing incident in a critical tone and applies a soft compassion to the marginalized groups of women who have encountered sexual and physical abuse.
Along with the gender equity movements like Time's Up and #MeToo in the U.S., Qu expresses her concern that women are generally given less opportunity in the Chinese film industry.
Another issue mentions by Qu that exacerbates the situation in the Chinese film industry is that investors and the capital press filmmakers use young casts for the roles that are written for people much older.
[11] Qu's directing style is largely influenced by French filmmaker Robert Bresson, and she uses a similar storytelling method to set the ending and the opening of the film in a way corresponding to each other.