A trailer for the documentary film “The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru”.
“The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru” is scheduled to be released nationwide on September 6.
The documentary “The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru,” which premiered at the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival in June, will be released nationwide on September 6.
Tickets for the film screening at the film festival sold out in less than 10 minutes and many viewers were moved to tears during the screening.
Chinese marine physicist Fang Li spent about eight years creating the documentary to bring this previously little-known historical event to light.
When the Lisbon Maru, a Japanese cargo ship, was sunk by a torpedo from an American submarine off Zhoushan in Zhejiang Province in 1942, the British prisoners of war on board jumped into the sea, but the Japanese army began shooting at them.
The documentary’s director and producer, Fang Li (right), visited Lin Ahgen (centre), one of the Chinese fishermen who saved the lives of Britons from the ship 82 years ago.
Fang Li (right) speaks with descendants of the ship’s survivors.
Risking their own lives, over 250 Chinese fishermen from Zhoushan arrived in sampans and rescued 384 people from the water, offering them food, clothing and shelter.
“From the moment I learned about this event, out of curiosity, I led a team to find the sunken ship,” said Fang, the film’s producer and director. “After finding the ship, I wanted to find people who were involved with it and learn their stories and what they experienced 82 years ago. That’s how we dug up this story. Now it’s time to tell this touching story to more people.”
Fang and the crew visited the UK, the US, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Zhoushan to collect historical material for the film and held personal interviews with historians, Chinese fishermen, the ship’s survivors and their descendants.
Fang used animation techniques to authentically depict the entire sinking of the Lisbon Maru and the hellish experience of the prisoners inside the ship.
Centenarian Dennis Morley (left) was the last British survivor of the ship. He died in 2021.
