Audience members in Los Angeles left cinemas in tears after Monday's premiere of a Chinese wartime film on the Nanjing Massacre, overwhelmed by its harrowing depiction of the atrocity committed by the Japanese invaders in 1937.
The movie Dead to Rights tells a gripping story of survival and resistance during the Nanjing Massacre, a catastrophic war crime committed by Japanese invaders in 1937 that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war.
For film producer Bob Underwood, the viewing experience left him distraught with emotion.
"I'm getting choked up to thinking about it, where they're looking at the pictures of the people and showing the pictures of the actual people what happened to them terribly afterwards. I've never seen that in a movie before and that was very powerful. And also it helped the Japanese to feel a little bit of shame for what you were a part of -- and let's not go back there, let's not repeat this," he said.
Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California, said the movie reveals some of the darkest chapters of World War II that are rarely discussed in the Western world.
"On a human level, it is very, very powerful, and it speaks to historic truths that we don't spend enough time reflecting on. I think the world today, we desperately need stories of survival and resistance. We need to tell those stories all the more and we need to understand each other's pain and suffering," he said.
The North American premiere of the film took place on August 6 at a cinema in Washington, D.C. The following day, the movie made its debut in multiple Canadian cities, including Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver.
On Friday, the film will officially open in major Canadian cinema chains and at theaters across several California cities in the United States.
Nanjing Massacre film "Dead to Rights" stirs emotion in Los Angeles viewers
Nanjing Massacre film "Dead to Rights" stirs emotion in Los Angeles viewers
