Documentary tells the story of brave Chinese fishermen who saved British lives

Documentary film "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru," which premiered in June at the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival, will be released nationwide on September 6.

Tickets for the film festival showing sold out in under 10 minutes, with the screening moving many viewers to tears.

Chinese marine physicist Fang Li spent about eight years making the documentary to unveil this previously little-known historical event.

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 onboard jumped into the sea but the Japanese army started shooting at them.

Risking their own lives, over 250 Chinese fishermen from Zhoushan arrived in sampans and saved 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 explore, hoping to find the sunken ship," said Fang, producer and director of the film. "After finding the ship, I wanted to find people related to it and learn about their stories, and what they went through 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 gather historical material for the film and had face-to-face talks with historians, Chinese fishermen, the ship's survivors and their descendants.

Fang used animation technology to authentically restore the whole sinking process of the Lisbon Maru and the prisoners' hellish experience inside the vessel.