BEIJING — The artist and filmmaker Zhao Liang has shed light on some of the darkest corners of Chinese society, filming in locations as obscure as a shantytown here known as the “petitioners’ village” and a military police office on the North Korean border.

But for his latest project, the director has focused his lens on a more visible social issue in China — so much more visible that he first spotted it while studying a satellite map.

“I knew I wanted to make a film about the environment, so in 2011, I spent about a year driving around China to see what was out there,” Mr. Zhao said in an interview in his studio here. “When I was in Inner Mongolia, I was looking at the map and this area was black. I couldn’t see it very clearly, because there was all this thick smog from the coal mines.”

Image Zhao Liang Credit... Courtesy of Zhao Liang

That is how Mr. Zhao, 44, came across the subject for “Behemoth,” in which documentary combines with art film to produce a powerful testament to the human and environmental costs of coal mining and consumption in China, the world’s biggest user of coal and the leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal.