ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS

1995, Banpo, a small town on a river in rural China. A dead old woman is found on the riverbank. Ma Zhe, head of the criminal police, takes on the case; suspicion quickly falls on a drifter considered mentally ill, and his superiors are already congratulating him. But cassette tapes that turn up reveal a secret couple, a hairdresser with a criminal record asks to be arrested, and a second body bears the same wounds. Ma Zhe sinks deeper into the hidden lives of his fellow citizens, learns that his unborn child may be disabled – and loses his footing between dream and reality. “Only the River Flows” by Wei Shujun, a Chinese film from 2023, is a crime film in which the fracture in the investigator matters more than the solution.

The Chinese director Wei Shujun adapted the novella “Mistakes by the River” by Yu Hua with Kang Chunlei and shot almost entirely on 16mm, in Nanfeng in Jiangxi province; Zhu Yilong plays Ma Zhe. The grain of the material makes the period tangible. It premiered in 2023 in Un Certain Regard in Cannes; in China the film was a box-office success. It was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2023 in the Late Night Special China section.

Shown at the 2023 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

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