A Highlight of Cannes 2023, Wei Shujun’s Visually Arresting Tribute to ’90s Neo-Noir Announces Itself as a Worthy Entry to the Pantheon of the Genre and a Feat of Modern Chinese Cinema.
Beginning Friday, July 26, Only the River Flows, Wei Shujun’s captivating ode to the genre of noir itself and a blockbuster box office sensation in China, opens for a one-week-long NY exclusive theatrical run at Metrograph In Theater.
When a woman’s body is discovered on the banks of a river near a small town in southern China, it’s up to police investigator Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), working out of an abandoned cinema, to find the killer—but what at first appears to be an open-and-shut case turns out to be only the first layer of an ever deepening mystery, as Ma’s inquiry reveals the hidden life of the rural community. Based on Yu Hua’s short novel Mistakes by the River, Wei’s bleakly atmospheric tour-de-force neo-noir is laced with gallows humor and touches of the surreal, its grungy, low-contrast 16mm photography a hand in glove fit for its 1990s setting. “Visually entrancing… a mystifying gem. One of the best films at Cannes 2023.” —Frieze. North American Theatrical Premiere, a KimStim release.
Introduction and Q&A with director Wei Shujun on Friday, July 26 and Saturday, July 27. In connection with the theatrical run of Only the River Flows, Metrograph presents In Pursuit of Shadows, a series of some of the most significant noir-inflected policiers to come out of East Asia from the 1940s to the present day, screening at Metrograph In Theater now through August 11.