In rural China in the 1990s, a woman’s body is found by the river. Chief Inspector Ma Zhe is given the task of investigating the seemingly simple murder case and, under his direction, an arrest is soon made. His superiors congratulate him, but several clues and multiple murders force Ma Zhe to dig deeper and despite his superiors’ orders, he continues to investigate the case further. More and more, he becomes embroiled in something that challenges his sense of reality and his obsession increases. Ma Zhe follows a prime suspect who is linked to the victim but keeps escaping him. Other leads inadvertently expose the hidden lives of the community – be it an illicit affair between two poetry lovers, or a transvestite trying to hide his identity from the public. Only the River Flows is Wei Shujun’s third feature film and was already a huge success in China. Less than a month after its theatrical release, the film was already one of China’s highest-earning arthouse films. With the combination of the grainy 16mm texture and lots of rain and fog, the film fits right into the neo-noir genre. The film is based on the short novel Mistakes by the River by renowned Chinese writer YU Hua. The murder investigation turns into an investigation of the mind, leaving the audience to discover what is real and what is not in an absurd world.