Inner Mongolia switches Old Testament monsters for the vast mining industry in the UK premier of a study into the industrial leviathan destroying the nation’s countryside.

With a violent roar, the mountain spews iron ore and coal with an infernal billowing smoke that leaves the resident workers struggling against fatigue and suffocation.

The silence of the dreamlike Chinese landscapes is broken only by the thundering cacophony of explosions set to create a new entrance to the mine. Sheep farmers and their herds have been driven from bright green pastures to make way for the ever-expanding mining industry; sick miners with ruined lungs lay dying in the local hospitals. A mountain paradise is mutated into an industrial zone surrounded by ghost towns of brand-new, deserted apartment blocks.

“Maverick indie helmer Zhao Liang continues his muckraking tour of China’s social and environmental woes with the stunningly lensed, cumulatively moving “Behemoth.” Acting as a modern-day Dante on a tour through Inner Mongolia’s coal mines and iron works, Zhao eschews narrative for an impressively self-shot poetic exercise in controlled righteous outrage, emphasizing the contrasts between rapidly dwindling green pastures and dead landscapes disemboweled by toxic mining.“

Jay Weissberg, Variety