Director: Yi’nan Diao
Cast: Fan Liao, Lun Mei Gwei, Xuebing Wang
China Mandarin with subtitles Drama
BLACK COAL, THIN ICE, is an inventive thriller: touches of creative brilliance and caustic humour combine in a police inquiry into murder linked to a mysterious femme fatale. Set in a snowbound industrial wasteland, severed body parts regularly appear on asphalt trucks heading off to furnish the country’s burgeoning building boom in a bleak Northern China. A former policeman, Zhang Zili (Fan Liao, who won Best Actor at Berlinale 2014), turns vigilante in a bid to trace the perpetrator and make amends for previous misdemeanours in the force.