ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS | HE BIAN DE CUO WU

CHINA | 2023 | COLOR | DCP | 102’ | MANDARIN

A detective in ‘90s rural China tries to solve a series of increasingly inexplicable murders. And, yes, the plot which looks like another whodunit could not be further from the world of this film by (unbelievably 32-year-old) Wei, who we saw as promising in ‘Striding into the Wind’ at AIFF three years ago and now he has amazingly fulfilled these promises, bringing about exciting hope. Cinema that converses with Bong Joon Ho and David Lynch, cinema of advanced mise en scene of details, of a tone that reveals a master behind the camera, and of a pervasive melancholy among the associations that escapes rationalism, leading it to the land of great cinema. I.D.

DIRECTOR: Wei Shujun
SCREENWRITERS: Kang Chunlei, Wei Shujun
DoP: Chengma
EDITOR: Mattieu Laclau
PRINCIPAL CAST: Zhu Yilong, Chloe Maayan, Jou Tianlai, Tong Linkai

WEI SHUJUN 
Director and screenwriter born in Beijing, where he studied Sound Engineering. He was an actor at 14, also a rapper and his first short film received Special Jury Distinction at Cannes 2018. He is the only post-90s born Chinese director who has been selected three times at Cannes. A brilliant, impressively mature talent.

FILMOGRAPHY
2023 Only the River Flows
2021 Ripples of Life
2020 Striding into the Wind
2018 On the Border