Diamond in the Dunes is the true story of hope and baseball in Chinaʼs Xinjiang Province— a region harshly divided between an indigenous Muslim minority, the Uyghurs, and the ruling Han Chinese.

The film follows Parhat Ablat, a twenty-year-old Uyghur shepherd, as he attends the regionʼs race-segregated Xinjiang University and forms a racially integrated baseball team.

With deep psychological sensitivity and a lyrical editing style, Diamond in the Dunes bears witness to Parhatʼs courageous struggle against an unequal society. In his quest to raise the Uyghur people out of their “spirit sickness,” Parhat leads the Xinjiang University team and founds a baseball program at a minority elementary school.

For Parhat, baseball is more than a game— itʼs a vehicle for spiritual transformation.

Finally, after a year of practice amidst tense ethnic relations, Parhat and the University team travel 2,000 miles for their only game of the season against a team of Tibetans on the Qinghai Plateau.