For over two decades, Chinese documentary filmmaker Cao Haibin and his team have used the camera to pierce through the dust of history, confronting memories of Nanjing long obscured by mainstream Western narratives.
The Nanjing Massacre took place when Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital on Dec. 13, 1937. Over the course of six weeks, they killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II. During the heinous atrocities, tens of thousands of women were subjected to sexual violence, while fires and looting left the city in ruins.
Cao's latest work pays tribute to Chinese-American author Iris Chang -- the courageous writer who sounded the alarm on history at the cost of her own life.
Her book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," exposes to the world a historical trauma that has long been deliberately downplayed.
Iris Chang's book forced the world to confront a buried horror. But her unflinching search for truth came at a devastating personal cost. The weight of so much darkness and grief drove her into despair, ending in her tragic suicide at just 36.
Years later, Cao carries that same burden.
The filmmaker has spent over 20 years capturing the echoes of a history too heavy to forget. With each frame, he pieces together memories long buried, ensuring that silence can no longer conceal the truth.
"I conducted interviews on the streets of New York and Los Angeles, asking people if they knew about the Nanjing Massacre. Almost no one did. After WWII, the international community remembered the victims of Auschwitz in various ways. Yet the Nanjing Massacre in China has been systematically marginalized," he said.
Cao's discovery wasn't his alone. Across the globe, others had noticed the same silence. For him, that silence was not merely an absence -- it was erasure. Confronting it became his mission.
"Japanese right-wing groups persistently attempt to erase and distort the atrocities they committed in Nanjing through various means. It is our responsibility to make sure the international community learns the truth about one of WWII's three major tragedies," he said.
As the number of living survivors dwindles, Cao and his team race against time, traveling the globe to preserve the final eyewitness accounts.
They also unearth long-buried archival footage, searching for light amid humanity's darkest hours. These visual chronicles are more than historical records -- they are cross-temporal dialogues between civilizations. In them, memory becomes a cornerstone of peace, and truth a light to guide the future.
"These glimmers of humanity's light are precisely why we create war trauma documentaries. It's not just to reveal human darkness, but also human kindness. This duality is the soul of our storytelling," he said.
Chinese documentary filmmaker pierces dust of history, confronts memories of Nanjing
