Helen Xu

We watched this on the opening night here in Australia. This is such a powerful and haunting portrayal of one of the darkest chapters of history. When the credits started to roll and the audience started to leave the theater, it was dead slient, nobody uttered a word. Both my husband (who isn't Chinese) and I were very emotional after watching the film. Unlike other war films, it doesn't try to portray the main characters as heroes. Rather, the main characters are just ordinary citizens of Nianjing, like the many tens of thousands who lost their lives during the Nanjing massacre. This is a film about the suffering of ordinary people during the war, their names and faces maybe forgotten, but their stories and sacrifices should never be forgotten.