Eight martyrs = Ba nu tou jiang

The film is based on a true story during the anti-Japanese war in 1938. Leng Yun, a school teacher, could not bear her husband who worked for the Japanese, and went to join an anti-Japanese troop. Leng and seven other girls in the troop established good friendship. As winter came, the troop camped on a river bank but was attacked by the Japanese one night. In order to cover the troop to break through the siege, the eight girls fought alone with the Japanese until all their ammunition was used up. The Japanese had wanted to capture them alive, but the eight girls, with the eldest only twenty five and the youngest only thirteen years old, would rather die than surrender. They went hand in hand into the cold river in the end.

China’s state-owned film studios have produced many military films about the anti-Japanese war, and this is one of them. The military films mainly aim at patriotic education. Anti-Japanese films have become a sub-genre of war films in Chinese cinema.
Established on August 1, 1952, August First Film Studio is located in Beijing and under the management of the Chinese army. In the 1960s, China produced a series of anti-Japanese war films, among which some well-known ones include Little Soldier Zhang Ga and Tunnel War. The People’s Liberation Army of China was established on August 1st 1927. (3 stars - Yuxing Zhou; December 16, 2010)