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Released
2009 · FILM

City of Life and Death

A Chinese soldier turned medic struggles to protect civilians and wounded soldiers in the aftermath of the 1937 Nanking Massacre as he confronts the brutality of war and the limits of human endurance.

Directed by
Chuan Lu
Written by
Chuan Lu
Runtime
132 min
Language
ZH
DramaHistoryWar

Synopsis

In 1937, during the height of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Army captured Nanjing, then the capital of the Republic of China. The period that followed became known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, and lasted for six weeks, during which tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Yun TengShot by Yu CaoScored by Tong LiuDesigned by Yi Hao

Box Office

2009 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.9× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$10.7M

Budget$12.0M
Worldwide gross$10.7M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • City of Life and Deathde
  • City of Life and Death – Das Nanjing Massakerde
  • Nánjīng! Nánjīng!de
  • City of Life and Deathen
  • Ciudad de vida y muertees

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