135 Films & TV Shows Set In China During The 1940s
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Letter from an Unknown Woman
Beijing The 1940s The 1930sPeking, 1948. A winter night. A man returns home to find a letter awaiting him written by a woman before her death. in the letter she tells him the story of her love for him -a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. her story spans 18 years from the moment she -then a 13 year-old girl- sets her eyes on her new neighbor. she tells their brief but passionate love in her youthi the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails tor ecognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son, she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and the last time. shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.
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Purple Butterfly
Shanghai The 1930s The 1940sDing Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.
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Japanese Devils
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sA documentary recording the testimony of fourteen former Japanese soldiers as they recount atrocities and war crimes committed during the Second World War, including the the infamous Unit 731 medical experimentation group. Having been trained by their country to be nothing but killers, the soldiers claim to have become morally numb and unable to see non-Japanese as even human. Perhaps feeling some remorse for what they have done, they now choose to tell their stories for the world to hear.
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Purple Sunset
🇷🇺 Russia 🇨🇳 China The 1940s The 1930sA Soviet Russian lady officer, a Chinese peasant and a Japanese schoolgirl must walk their way out of a forest toward the end of World War II, despite their mutual distrust of one another.
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Devils on the Doorstep
Hebei Province The 1930s The 1940sDuring the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town. The owner is bullied into keeping the prisoners until the next New Year, at which time they will be collected. The village leaders convene to interrogate the prisoners. The townspeople then struggle to accommodate the prisoners. One is a bellicose Japanese nationalist, the other a nervous translator. Will the townspeople manage to keep the prisoners until the New Year?
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Heart of China
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sA story of an American pilot who crashes in China, gets rescued and falls in love with a local woman. Years later he returns to pay his respects.
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The Great Military March Forward: Fight for Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou
Jiangsu Province Shanghai Zhejiang Province The 1940s -
Human Remains
🇨🇳 China 🇩🇪 Germany 🇪🇸 Spain 🇮🇹 Italy 🇷🇺 Russia The 1930s The 1950s The 1940sHuman Remains is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of the 20th century's most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives -- their favorite foods, films, habits and sexual preferences. There is no mention of their public lives or of their place in history. The intentional omission of the horrors for which these men were responsible hovers over the film.
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Seven Years in Tibet
🇮🇳 India Tibet 🇦🇹 Austria The 1940sAt the end of the world his real journey began. — Austrian mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow detainee and makes his way to Llaso, Tibet, where he meets the 14-year-old Dalai Lama, whose friendship ultimately transforms his outlook on life.
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Kundun
🇮🇳 India Tibet The 1930s The 1940s The 1950sThe destiny of a people lies in the heart of a boy. — The Tibetans refer to the Dalai Lama as 'Kundun', which means 'The Presence'. He was forced to escape from his native home, Tibet, when communist China invaded and enforced an oppressive regime upon the peaceful nation. The Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959 and has been living in exile in Dharamsala ever since.
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The Soong Sisters
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sThe Soong family was a political dynasty in China that reached the highest levels of power. This film follows the lives of the three Soong daughters, who were educated in America and returned to China. Ai-ling (the oldest) married a wealthy and powerful businessman. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of modern China. Mei-ling (the youngest) married Chiang Kai-shek, China's leader during World War II. The sisters captured the world's fascination for their brilliant marriages and their strong influence on their nation.
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Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sBlack Sun: The Nanking Massacre, also called Men Behind the Sun 4, is a 1994 Hong Kong film directed by Mou Tun Fei and is in many ways considered to be a follow up to the 1987 shockumentary film, Men Behind the Sun. The movie depicts the events behind the Nanking Massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese army against Chinese citizens and refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Like Men Behind the Sun, the film was both criticized and praised for its brutal portrayal of the Japanese atrocities, such as the notorious contest to kill 100 people using a sword, during the early and late stages of World War II, but at the same time was questioned over historical accuracy and violence which gave the film a more exploitation feel to it.
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Don't Cry, Nanking
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sIn December 1937, during the Second Japanese-Sino War, a Chinese doctor, his Japanese pregnant wife, their teenage daughter and their young son travel from Shanghai to Nanjing seeking shelter in the Capital during the Japanese invasion. The family faces the Rape of Nanking by the Imperial Japanese Army, with rapes, mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians including women, children and elders, and disrespect of international conventions.
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Fist of Legend
Shanghai Kyoto Prefecture The 1930s The 1940sTo avenge his masters death, He'll fight like never before! — Chen Zhen, a Chinese engineering student in Kyoto, who braves the insults and abuse of his Japanse fellow students for his local love Mitsuko Yamada, daughter of the director, returns in 1937 to his native Shangai, under Japanse protectorate -in fact military occupation- after reading about the death of his kung-fu master Hou Ting-An in a fight against the Japanese champion Ryuichi Akutagawa.
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To Live
🇨🇳 China The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sFugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry.
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Circus Kids
Shanghai The 1940sWith nothing left to lose, this family will fight for justice. — The circus group performs at the Shanfa Circus when a huge load of bombs crash on the stage and the performers try to find a home to live and get money for food.
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Farewell My Concubine
Beijing The 1930s The 1940sAbandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.
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The Raid
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sIn the 1930s, China was in a state of turmoil and flurry. The dethroned Emperor Pu-Yi had established the Puppet State of Manchukuo in Manchuria and was cooperating with the Japanese in the testing of poisonous gas. The revolutionary army headed by Lieutenant Mong is assigned to crush this vicious plot. During his mission, Mong comes across witty and valiant veteran Uncle Choy and his friends, who volunteer to help. Mong believes that Uncle Choy is too old to join them. How can Uncle Choy prove himself? And can they succeed in their mission?
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The Fortune Code
🇨🇳 China The 1940s The 1930sSet in China during the Japanese occupation. A young man breaks out of a POW camp to marry his sweetheart, but finds she is now a spy for the resistance, code-named "Number 3". With the help of "Number 2" he returns to the camp to find "Fortune", an agent who possesses the pass-code to a Swiss bank account with $500 billion intended for the Chinese army.
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The Last Aristocrats
Massachusetts 🇮🇹 Italy Jiangsu Province Shanghai The 1940sIn 1948, four young girls, daughters of Shanghai's elite, attending college in America find themselves unable to return after the Communists take Shanghai.
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Evening Bell
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sTaking place in the immediate aftermath of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Evening Bell follows a small platoon of five Chinese soldiers who must negotiate a devastated landscape, burying bodies, disarming mines, and eventually facing off against a starving band of Japanese soldiers who do not yet know that the war has ended.
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Men Behind the Sun
🇨🇳 China The 1940s The 1930sThe film is a graphic depiction of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese at Unit 731, the secret biological weapons experimentation unit of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The film details the various cruel medical experiments Unit 731 inflicted upon the Chinese and Soviet prisoners at the tail-end of the war.
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The Last Emperor
Beijing Shanghai The 1980s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s1500 slaves. 353,260,000 royal subjects. Warlords. Concubines. And 2 wives. He was the loneliest boy in the world. — A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
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Empire of the Sun
Shanghai The 1940s The 1930sTo survive in a world at war, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him. — Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirits, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.
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