In the Chinese city of Wuhan, a network of lakes provide ideal places to hide, and when transgressive mid-level crime boss Zhou needs to lay low, he looks for anonymity amidst the neon-lit hangouts. There he meets sex worker Liu, who works for Zhou’s boss and who may or may not be there to save him.

After winning the Berlinale Golden Bear with Black Coal, Thin Ice, Diao Yinan returns with a hyper-stylised noir set in modern China’s underbelly. Twisting the conventions of the genre, this impressively crafted choreography of violence, moral decay and neon colours is striking, intoxicating cinema.