North American Premiere
From Wei Shujun, one of China’s most notable millennial filmmakers, Only the River Flows is a neo-noir set in the underdeveloped countryside in the early 1990s. A serial killer terrorizes a tiled-roof hamlet of barely 50 families. Detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) is in charge of the investigation and faces challenges that make his job even harder: his team is incompetent, the locals are cagey, and his wife is going through a difficult pregnancy. The time and location are no accident: the events in the film take place between the Tiananmen Square protests and China’s economic boom. Shame and secrecy are rampant and the killer takes full advantage of it. As the film progresses, the detective’s grasp of reality begins to falter and, by extension, the audience’s. Wei brings back the narrative sophistication of classic Chinese filmmakers. His pitch-black sense of humor and favoring of aesthetics over traditional storytelling turn what could have been a generic procedural into an unpredictable journey.
Wei Shujun’s third feature offers a mix of dead-end detective work, doomed characters and surreal dreamscapes. … What is not in doubt is his standing as one of China’s most complex cineastes.
Clarence Tsui, South China Morning Post
Zhu Yilong, Chloe Maayan, Hou Tianlai, Tong Linkai
China
2023
Panorama
In Mandarin with English subtitles
Graphic Violence
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Tang Xiaohui, Dorothy Zeng, Li Chan
Producer
Tang Xiaohui, Huang Xufeng, Li Chan, Shen Yang
Screenwriter
Kang Chunlei, Wei Shujun
Cinematography
Chengma
Editor
Mattieu Laclau
Production Design
Zhang Menglun
Director
Wei Shujun
Wei Shujun was born in 1991 in Beijing, China. He started his career as an actor at 14 years old. He completed his master degree at the Communication University of China. His films include On the Border (short, 2018, Special Jury Award at Cannes Film Festival), Striding into the Wind (2020, Official Selection Cannes Film Festival) and Ripples of Life (2021, Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes).
Filmography: Striding into the Wind (2020); Ripples of Life (2021)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Auction
Inspired by a true story, writer-director Pascal Bonitzer has crafted an inquiring, witty drama about the art market. When a long-lost Egon Schiele masterpiece reemerges, art appraiser Alex is initially skeptical. And yet...
The Librarians
Dispatches from the front line of America's culture wars (and ours too): librarians speak out about the war against ideas, history, freedom of expression and sexual identity, a campaign in which an open mind is the ultimate enemy.
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
Sinners
This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
La venue de l'avenir
Four cousins are tapped to investigate an abandoned house that is their joint inheritance. As they explore, they learn their story of their ancestor Adele (Suzanne Lindon) and her foray into Paris in the age of Impressionism.