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
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al
Shot in Vancouver: The Changeling, introduced by Sam Wiebe
To mark the publication of Sam Wiebe's new book about BC film, Shot in Vancouver, we're pleased to welcome Sam to introduce Severin Film's new 4K restoration of Peter Medak's 1980 haunted house classic — with Vancity standing in for Seattle.
House of Hope
"House of Hope" is the name of a Waldorf elementary school near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, founded by Manar and her husband Milad. This documentary follows their efforts to go about their lives before, during, and after the events of October 7.
Day of Wrath
Anna, the young second wife of a well-respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small seventeenth-century village. Stepping outside the bounds of the village's harsh moral code has disastrous results.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.