City of Life and Death

City of Life and Death (2009) is a Chinese-Hong Kong war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Lu Chuan and shot entirely in black and white. The film covers the fall of Nanjing to Japanese Imperial forces in December 1937 — six weeks history records as the Nanjing Massacre.

Lu Chuan refuses to build a single protagonist. Instead, the film tracks fragments: a Chinese soldier who keeps fighting when his unit has already scattered, women sheltering inside the Ginling Girls' College safety zone, a German businessman trying to negotiate protection for thousands of refugees, a young Japanese soldier who carries out orders he cannot reconcile. The camera stays close, the chaos never abstracted.

What sets this apart from other war epics is its refusal of catharsis. The black-and-white photography gives the devastation a newsreel weight without making it feel historical and remote. The film competed for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Stream City of Life and Death (2009) online on iFILM.