Only the River FlowsMovies like Only the River Flows
- Key Features:
- Murder investigation, Rural setting, Police procedural, Small town secrets, Moral ambiguity, Social commentary, Mystery, Crime, 1990s, China, Cultural context
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Fans of crime dramas, Lovers of international cinema, Viewers interested in social issues, Those seeking suspenseful mysteries
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Suspicion → Revelation
Only the River Flows

1990s, Banpo Town, rural China. A woman's body is found by the river. Ma Zhe, Chief of the Criminal Police, heads up the murder investigation that leads to an obvious arrest. His superiors hurry to congratulate him, but several clues push Ma Zhe to delve deeper into the hidden behaviour of his fellow citizens.
Only the River Flows
A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.

A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered on Christmas Eve. However, in a neighborhood rife with crime, everyone seems to be a suspect.

In a quiet little French town, two detectives are tasked with investigating the brutal rape and murder of a preteen girl.

China, the 1990s. A young bookseller is in love with a woman. The woman is now with another guy, a rich man. The rich man sends his people to beat the bookseller. In the fight, the laptop computer from a man looking at the scene gets broken. Who will pay for the computer? The bookseller wants revenge. Will it be useful? The bookseller and the laptop owner are from different ages and classes. They are two different points of view, two different Chinas. How will they fight for justice?

When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.

A female detective investigates the cause of a high school girl’s death and uncovers a disturbing truth.

After the forcible transfer to his Bavarian home village, an ex-criminal cop investigates the death of a school principal who he thinks had lots to hide.

Pan Xiao, a young lawyer, goes to a rural small village settled in the western desert lands of China to handle the case of a falcon poacher who has ran over a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning and forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward. Then, he just drives back home, but the return will not be an easy one.

Set in the People's Republic of China during the 1990s, the film centers on a 13-year-old substitute teacher, Wei Minzhi, in the Chinese countryside. Called in to substitute for a village teacher for one month, Wei is told not to lose any students.

Following the disappearance of the glamorous and secretive Evelyne Ducat during a blizzard in the highlands of southern France, the lives of five people inextricably linked to Evelyne are brought together to devastating effect as the local police investigate the case.

During China's Song Dynasty, a mysterious murder occurs at Chancellor Quin Hui's palace after meeting delegates from the neighboring Jin Dynasty. The members become embroiled not just in a murder mystery, but a larger conspiracy concerning the fate of the empire.

A town in Fengjie county is gradually being demolished and flooded to make way for the Three Gorges Dam. A man and woman visit the town to locate their estranged spouses, and become witness to the societal changes.

When a mysterious corpse is found in a river, a distressed police officer delves into a string of grisly murders as danger quickly approaches.

A young man abandons his family for a solitary life of fly-fishing. His goal was to find his own way in the fishing world and thereby find himself and love.

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.

The body of a young woman is discovered near a farm. The judge, Larcher is in charge and thinks that the farmers have something to do with the murder.

The recently deceased Mona Dearly was many things: an abusive wife, a domineering mother, a loud-mouthed neighbor and a violent malcontent. So when her car and corpse are discovered in the Hudson River, police Chief Wyatt Rash immediately suspects murder rather than an accident. But, since the whole community of Verplanck, N.Y., shares a deep hatred for this unceasingly spiteful woman, Rash finds his murder investigation overwhelmed with potential suspects.

Northern China, 2004. When miner Zhang Baomin returns to his home, a small and isolated mining village, his wife tells him that their son has mysteriously disappeared while shepherding his small flock.

An unrecognizable, charred corpse discovered in a remote mountain village in China connects three local stories.

A dicey murder investigation. A fuming best friend. A chaotic living situation. Village police officer Franz Eberhofer has a lot on his plate right now.

Former East Germany, 1992. Patrick Stein and Markus Bach, two very different police officers, are commissioned to investigate the disappearance of two female teenagers in a remote area of the country. Did they run away from home or did something more terrible happen to them?

A group of high-school friends must come to terms with the fact that one of them, Samson, killed another, Jamie. Faced with the brutality of death, each must decide whether to turn their friend in to the police, or to help him escape the consequences of his dreadful deed.

An honest Superintendent of Police, IPS Amit Kumar, is assigned to a crime infested town to reduce its crime rates. There, he soon learns that cleaning up the town also means confronting the corruption among police and politicians.

A pig farmer, a busboy, a salon owner, an expat architect and a jaded rich girl cross paths as thousands of dead pigs float down the Yangtze River toward Shanghai.

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.

Abel Grey is sent to investigate the death of a boy from an exclusive local school, who is found floating in the river. Fearing scandal, the school insists it was suicide. But after discovering from the boy's girlfriend, Carlin, that he was being badly bullied, Abel suspects that a dangerous schoolboy initiation has gone horribly wrong and he secretly solicits the help of a sympathetic teacher, Betsy. He is warned off the investigation by his boss, as the school is a generous benefactor to the Police benevolent fund. Abel, however, cannot let the case go, not only because his own brother committed suicide years before, but also it seems that the spirit of the dead boy is leaving them clues as to what really happened that night.

In the south of Laos, an American volunteer doctor becomes a fugitive after he intervenes in the sexual assault of a young woman. When the assailant's body is pulled from the Mekong River, things quickly spiral out of control.

A woman married to the brutal and infertile owner of a dye mill in rural China conceives a boy with her husband's nephew but is forced to raise her son as her husband's heir without revealing his parentage in this circular tragedy. Filmed in glowing technicolour, this tale of romantic and familial love in the face of unbreakable tradition is more universal than its setting.

An aged father and his younger, mentally challenged son have been working hard every day to keep the bathhouse running for a motley group of regular customers. When his elder son, who left years ago to seek his fortune in the southern city of Shenzhen, abruptly returns one day, it once again puts under stress the long-broken father-son ties. Presented as a light-hearted comedy, Shower explores the value of family, friendship, and tradition.

The sins of the past are not forgotten in this chilling suspense thriller. When the first body was discovered, it seemed a coincidence. But now homicide detective Jack Verdon has cause to worry: the victims of a series of brutal sex murders are all his former girlfriends. Suspected by the FBI agent who’s taken over the case and suspended by his captain, Jack must work outside the law if he’s to find the killer, save his future and protect what’s left of his past.

Roman police detectives interrogate a series of potential perpetrators in their struggle to determine whom to arrest for the brutal murder of a beautiful prostitute whose body is discovered in a park on the day of a torrential rainstorm. One by one, the prime suspects -- girl-crazy teenager Nino, pickpocket Canticchia, a soldier on leave, a tourist and a pimp -- recount the events of the day to the police, each insisting he is innocent.

The Chinese government launches a daring operation to arrest a violent drug cartel following the discovery of thirteen Chinese crew members' bodies on two ships sailing through the Mekong River.

A story about Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman, who lives alone in the Klodzko Valley where a series of mysterious crimes are committed. Duszejko is convinced that she knows who (or what) is the murderer, but nobody believes her.

In the harbor city of Le Havre, France, a woman is stabbed during the night, just below the windows of her neighborhood. Pierre (Yvan Attal) has witnessed the murder, and heard the wails of the women crying for help. So have the neighbors, certainly. But at the end, nobody called the police. Nevertheless, sorrows are too heavy for Pierre, which feel the needs to tell everything to his wife (Sophie Quinton), and to the police. During the investigation, it appears that 38 people witnessed the murdering, and none reacted...

Noumouké, from the suburb of Paris, is about to decide which brother's foot steps to follow - the lawyer student Soulaymaan or the gangster Demba.

Li and his wife A Yu run a small business in Thailand and enjoy a happy home life with their two daughters. When their eldest daughter is violently assaulted, blackmailed and left traumatised by another student, her parents intervene, leading to a dead body which needs to be hidden, and every trace of the boy buried to cover up the accident.

A small town pickpocket whose friends have moved on to higher trades finds himself bitter and unable to adapt.

When the son of a successful judge is killed by two police officers and the system sets them free, a hardened veteran detective finds some incriminating files on the officers and the judge teams up with another mourning father to take the law into his own hands.

Two former cops start investigating the series of murders that tanked their careers when the killings begin again.

When Lisa's younger sister suddenly disappears without a trace, she returns to her home village to search for the missing girl on her own. But before she can follow up a real lead, a dead girl is found by the river.

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.

When circumstances force an outlaw to impersonate a county governor and clean up a corrupt town, the Robin Hood figure finds himself in a showdown with the local godfather.

After people in his town start turning up dead, a grumpy landlord is visited by a man who recounts an unsolved serial murder case from 30 years ago that may hold the clue to what is happening now.

When two corrupt police officers investigate the brutal murder of a young girl, tensions come to a head in their small, racially-segregated town.

Using almost no dialogue, the film follows a number of residents (both human and animal) of a small rural community in Hungary – an old man with hiccups, a shepherdess and her sheep, an old woman who may or may not be up to no good, some folk-singers at a wedding, etc. While most of the film is a series of vignettes, there is a sinister and often barely perceptible subplot involving murder.

A murdered girl is found under a bridge on a remote road and indigenous detective Jay Swan gets the case. Jay finds that no-one is that interested in solving the murder of an indigenous teenager and he is forced to work alone.

A series of murders is committed in Nice on the French riviera. The commissaire Carella is in charge and tries to find a missing link between all these murders.

A cop investigates whether the man convicted of murdering his daughter is really guilty.

After her father dies, a young woman returns to her Yorkshire village for the first time in 15 years to claim the family farm she believes is hers.

An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.

This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left.

A pawn shop proprietor buys used goods from desperate locals – as much to play perverse power games as for his own livelihood, but when the perfect rump and a backed-up toilet enter his life, he loses all control.

The tragic death of a beautiful young girl starts a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse between hunter John Moon and the hardened backwater criminals out for his blood.

Police officer Pipa works on her first big case while simultaneously investigating her boss, who is suspected of murder. The prequel to "Perdida".

Auguste Maroilleur, an elderly farmer, exploits 400 hectares of crop land with the help of his family, over which he rules with an iron hand. Things go awry the day he discovers one of his grandsons is involved in drug traffic. To make matters worse, the reckless youth has hidden the white powder in the Maroilleur farm. Without a moment's hesitation, Auguste gets rid of the toxic substance but, of course, the mob has different views...

In rural Japan, the survivors of a tragedy converge and attempt to overcome their damaged selves, all while a serial killer is on the loose.

A small town in an Argentinian province, 1975. The life of Claudio, a successful lawyer, gets complicated when he has a stupid quarrel with a stranger in a crowded restaurant.

China O'Brien; big city police woman; martial arts trainer, is forced to hand in her badge and head home to her father and the small town where she grew up. The peaceful town she knew is now struggling against the clutches of organized crime. When her father, the town sheriff, is killed China decides to run for his position and clean up the town. The poll results spark a series of confrontations that finally decide who runs the town . . .

During the Republican era, a group of frustrated people from the movie industry is invited in a luxurious mansion to make a movie out of a gruesome case that has recently rattled the city of Shanghai, in the hopes that it would turn into a huge sensation and make them famous. However, they never expected that the murderer would be in their midst and that the truth behind the case would be far more bizarre than their fictional movie plot.

When her husband is kicked in the groin by the village head, Qiu Ju, a peasant woman, despite her pregnancy, travels to a nearby town, and later a big city to deal with its bureaucrats and find justice.

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.

In 1900, a white woman was murdered in Chinatown in San Francisco, and the suspect was a Chinese man. The murder caused social shock, and people demanded the closure of Chinatown.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

A young IPS officer’s new posting in rural India has him confronting caste disparities and uncomfortable truths in the face of a gruesome crime. When three girls go missing in the fictional village of Lalgaon, two of them are found dead and there is no trace of the third one. Where is she and who is responsible for this heinous act?

Michel, the jovial owner of the only café in a small Normandy town, sees his life turned upside down when his teenage daughter is murdered. The community has his back but soon rumor spreads and Michel is singled out. From the ideal father, he becomes the ideal culprit.

Tang Yijie, the Construction Committee Director, falls off from rooftop and dies in a demolition riot. Yang Jiadong, a young police officer starts his investigation and finds that Tang's death is tied up with another case several years ago. Soon he is framed and suspended from duty, but he never gives up.

Reza, residing in the wilderness with his wife and son, lives a retired life and devotes himself to freshwater fish farming. A private company that has targets on his land is ready to do anything to force him to sell.

In order to pay for the donkey that brings them water, a countryside village registers it as a teacher at its local school. But when the charity group that funds the school visits for an inspection, the village has to find ways to hide their secret.

Shanghai, China, 1930. When young Shuisheng arrives from the countryside, his uncle Liushu puts him at the service of Bijou, the mistress of Laoda, supreme boss of the Tang Triad, constantly threatened by his enemies, both those he knows and those lurking in the shadows.

A clash between fishermen and poachers is surging on the Po river Delta. A local group of volunteers lead by Osso wants to save the river from overfishing and defend it from the Florians, a family on the run from the Danube region. They have with them Elia, who once was part of the local community and now is on the opposite side of the conflict. Overtaken by blind violence and thirst for vengeance, Elia and Osso will confront each other in the Delta fogs, discovering their real nature in a fight that has no heroes.

A respectable village head decides to keep his son away from the violent politics of rural life. However, fate intervenes, forcing the young man to not only return home, but also take up the sickle.

The Spanish Deep South, 1980. A series of brutal murders of adolescent girls in a remote and forgotten town bring together two disparate characters - both detectives in the homicide division - to investigate the cases.

Veteran homicide cop Fermanand his hot-headed partner İdris team up with rookie cop and anthropology major Hasan to investigate the murder of a young woman. The suspects include her conservative family, who might have killed her for honor, her drug-dealing boyfriend and aged billionaire Battal who had taken the victim as his second wife.

At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing another woman.

Yu, a self-assured factory guard, fancies himself a detective and begins poking his nose into a murder investigation.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

China’s rapid changes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

Based on a novel by the same name written by Gu Hua, a melodrama about the life and travails of a young woman who lives through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

An old leper who owned a remote sorghum winery dies. Jiu'er, the wife bought by the leper, and her lover, identified only as "my Grandpa" by the narrator, take over the winery and set up an idealized quasi-matriarchal community headed by Jiu'er. When the Japanese invaders subject the area to their rule and cut down the sorghum to make way for a road, the community rises up and resists as the sorghum grows anew.

A modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.

Indigenous Detective Jay Swan arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons inquiry. What seems like a simple investigation unearths an intricate web of crime, corruption, human trafficking, and coordinated exploitation of indigenous people’s land. Jay must bury his differences with young local cop Josh, so together they can bring justice to Goldstone.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

Inspector Lavardin is called to a provincial village to investigate a murder – only to find that one of his ex-lovers is the victim’s widow.

When police discover a young girl brutally murdered, brothers Joe Fairburns and Chrissie Fairburns join their supervisor Robert to investigate main suspect Jason Buliegh, a local sex offender and social outcast. Forced to release Jason from police custody, the Fairburns take matters into their own hands in an attempt to coerce a confession.

With the mayoral election approaching, the newly-appointed state prosecutor of a small town suffering from a water supply crisis gradually descends into trouble after a young local woman is raped.

A mother lives quietly with her son. One day, a girl is brutally killed, and the boy is charged with the murder. Now, it's his mother's mission to prove him innocent.

In a small French village, everything would be quiet if the local wildlife cop was not being ridiculed by a smart poacher.

A look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife.

Unorthodox detective Jean Lavardin is called to a provincial French town after a prank turns deadly.

A policeman takes his family on a holiday, and after almost hitting a wild hog, the car won't start. They get hike with a guy scrutinizing his pretty wife. Shortly after, she disappears.

A cop investigates the murder of a beautiful teen girl left naked by a lake.

The Maclean brothers, Paul and Norman, live a relatively idyllic life in rural Montana, spending much of their time fly fishing. The sons of a minister, the boys eventually part company when Norman moves east to attend college, leaving his rebellious brother to find trouble back home. When Norman finally returns, the siblings resume their fishing outings, and assess where they've been and where they're going.

In Paris, a young girl is found dead in a Parisian square, wearing an evening dress. Commissioner Maigret will try to identify her and then understand what happened to the victim.

A serial killer, nicknamed Le Ver(s) Solitaire (The Lone Worm) for the alexandrines left at the crime scenes, is spreading terror. Under the orders of a commissioner, Clarisse Sterling, a rookie in the crime squad, can only rely on her instinct, 200g of chouquettes and the virtues of a well-placed pineapple to solve this investigation and save her skin.

In a crime-plagued area of Rio de Janeiro, a team of honest cops, including a determined rookie, fights corruption and mistrust on all sides.

In 1983, communist Poland is shaken by the case of high school student Grzegorz Przemyk, who is beaten to death by police. The only witness of the beating becomes the number one enemy of the state.

A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust…
