Check out the new poster for Zhang Yimou‘s upcoming Chinese historical drama war film The Flowers of War, about a period which has become historically known as the ‘Rape of Nanking’. In 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese war, Japanese troops captured the former capital of the Peoples Republic of China and subjected it’s citizens to an unrelenting programme of mass murder, mutilation and rape.
Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, Hero, House of the Flying Daggers) tells an epic story of love and sacrifice in THE FLOWERS OF WAR, starring Christian Bale and introducing Ni Ni.
The film, set during the Japanese invasion of China, is told from a young girl’s point of view, not as a history lesson, but as an intimate, elemental and paradoxically universal celebration of the human spirit. Bale stars as a dissolute Westerner who seeks refuge in a Catholic Church. There he meets a beautiful Chinese courtesan who helps him rescue a group of schoolgirls from a terrible fate at the hands of the Japanese.
The film represents one of China’s most ambitious productions, involving the recreation of 1937 Nanking built from scratch over a one-year period and the collaboration of one of Hollywood’s most sought after leading men (Christian Bale).
The Flowers of War, previously called Nanjing Heroes and 13 Flowers of Nanjing, is based on Chinese author Yan Geling’s novel “The 13 Women of Nanjing” and hits theaters January 20th, 2012.
