"A salute to the classic Hollywood film noir – an exciting stylistic tour-de-force." Hollywood Reporter

Winning the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bear for Best Actor (for Liao Fan) at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, Black Coal, Thin Ice is the new cinematic triumph from Chinese phenomenon Diao Yinan (Night Train, MIFF 2008). A masterfully controlled exercise in narrative chicanery and noir atmospherics, Diao's film pays homage to the legends of the past but transforms them into something resolutely his own.

Haunted by a botched murder investigation five years earlier, former policeman Zhang has retired to a distant mining town in an attempt to drink his past away. But when bodies start turning up in a strikingly familiar fashion, Zhang sees a chance to atone for the sins of his past.

"It's the darkest shade of noir, replete with dismemberment and sexual violence, though Diao juices it up with a subtly insinuating neon glow, a remarkably daring sense of absurdist humour, and some very witty and stylish flourishes." Senses of Cinema