Only the River Flows

When a woman’s body washes up on the shore in small-town China in the 1990s, the local chief of police, Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), is tasked with leading the investigation. An obvious suspect leads to a hasty arrest, though the mystery lingers in Ma Zhe’s mind. What kind of darkness is truly at play here? As torrents of rain envelop the town, Ma Zhe will be drawn to the edge of madness in pursuit of truth. Both a tantalizing cinematic puzzle and a sharp-edged portrait of provincial paranoia, Wei Shujun’s ultra-atmospheric, retro-stylized noir captures the pulpy proceedings in gritty, textured film grain that goes beyond period recreation to fully evoke the look and feel of a bygone era.