Black Coal, Thin Ice

Black Coal, Thin Ice (白日焰火, 2014) is a Chinese crime thriller directed by Diao Yinan — watch it online on iFILM. The film took the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Northern China, late 1990s: body parts turn up at a coal plant, an investigation collapses in a botched raid, and the detective assigned to the case drinks himself out of a job.

Five years later the killings start again. Every victim had contact with the same woman — a quiet employee at a dry-cleaning shop. The disgraced former cop, now working security, begins tailing her and slides into an entanglement he can neither justify nor stop. Liao Fan and Gwei Lun-Mei play this out with a controlled, almost affectless precision that makes the menace feel completely real.

Diao builds his neo-noir through textures rather than plot mechanics: frozen streets, flickering neon, an outdoor ice-skating rink that turns up at three different points in the story, each time meaning something different. It's a slow, cold film that trusts the audience to sit with ambiguity. Stream Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) on iFILM.