Chinese director Yi'nan Diao's riveting drama about a disgraced cop's obsession with finding a serial killer is a noir-ish thriller and vivid warts-and-all portrait of the new China, which scooped the Golden Bear prize for Best Film at last year's Berlinale.

Northern China, 1999. When body parts of an unknown man's corpse start turning up in coal depositories across a wide swathe of Northeast China, divorced cop Zhang (Liao Fan) begins to pursue the few leads that are available. Things start to move forward when an identity card leads to the husband of beautiful taciturn laundress Zhichen (Taiwanese superstar Gwei Lun-mei) before the whole case comes crumbling down during a spectacularly bungled arrest that leaves two police officers dead and his partner badly injured. Fast-forward to 2004 and Zhang, traumatised, shamed and dismissed from the police, has taken a job working as a security guard and spends the rest of his time drowning his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle. But when body parts begin appearing again and a series of men linked to Zhichen start ending up dead his suspicions and interest in the case are re-aroused.

Gritty-yet-stylish and infused with elements of black comedy, the mysteries and puzzles of this nightmarish urban noir are wrapped inside multiple layers of intrigue and suspicion, inviting you to investigate the whos, the whys and the wherefores of this marvellously oddball tale.

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