City of Life and Death Goes to War with Kino Int.

Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death will finally receive its theatrical release and it won’t be via the National Geographic folks who originally picked up the film in 2009, but never released the film due to circumstances that appeared to fall into a grey zone. Kino International have grabbed the rights and have set the pic up with a May 11th release at Film Forum.

Gist: A box office smash back at home, this is the epic tale of the defiance of the citizens who survive the horrors of the 1937 Japanese occupation of China’s capital Nanjing. The Chinese soldiers, civilians, women and children, along with courageous American and European sympathizers – based on real personalities – bravely fight to persevere and live when it would have been so much easier for them to accept defeat and death.

Worth Noting: The subject matter acts very much like a continual source for silver-screen. Christian Bale just signed up to star in Zhang Yimou’s “Nanjing Massacre“, which shows an American priest who helps the Chinese escape death. 

Do We Care?: We’re big fans of Chuan’s Kekexili: Mountain Patrol so when we couldn’t program the film among our TIFF coverage back in 2009, we figured the domestic buy would pan out much sooner than later.