Only The River Flows

1990s, Banpo Town, rural China. A woman’s body is found by the river. Ma Zhe, Chief of the Criminal Police, heads up the murder investigation that quickly leads to an obvious arrest. As his superiors are keen to communicate their success, several clues push Ma Zhe to delve deeper into the hidden behaviour of his fellow citizens. With a singular and acerbic vision, Wei Shujun plays with the detective genre, adapting Yu Hua’s short novel Mistakes By The River (author of To Live adapted by Zhang Yimou), for his third feature film after Striding Into The Wind (Cannes Label 2020) and Ripples Of Life (Directors’ Fortnight 2021).