2024 Winner Golden Silk Road Award - Best Documentary
2024 Winner Golden Rooster - Best Documentary
2025 Long Listed Oscars - Best Documentary
2025 Submitted BAFTA - Best Documentary
This is not a film about war. It is a film about the effects of war
on families.
For generations.
Producer & Director Fang Li interviews the late Ron Brooks, son of Master Gunner Charles Brooks who perished in the sinking.
In 2000, while researching another book, Hong Kong based British historian and author Tony Banham heard the story of the sinking of the Lisbon Maru and raced to find survivors and documents before it was too late. His original book was published in 2006.
In 2014, while making another film, China based producer Fang Li heard the story from the fishermen of Zhoushan who had saved so many lives that day. He vowed to record the facts, building on Banham’s earlier research and taking it to another level. That work started in 2018 and – despite huge challenges caused by the pandemic and necessary funding – was completed in 2024.
The film’s Premiere was at the Shanghai International Film Festival in June that year, and it went on release in China on 6 September. It quickly realized a score of 9.3 on Douban and 8.5 on IMDB, becoming a surprise hit.
In the same month it won Best Documentary at both the Golden Silk Road Awards in Xian and Golden Rooster in Xiamen, and was originally picked by China’s government as the nation’s official entry in the category of International Films at the 2025 Oscars. However, as more than 50% of the dialogue was in English - interviews with the families of the men on board - it was moved to the Best Documentary category.
On October 1st 1942, the American submarine Grouper fired six torpedoes at a Japanese troop transport, the Lisbon Maru, off Shanghai. Five of the unreliable Mk 14 fish either passed under the target or failed to detonate, but one exploded against the stern, bringing the ship to a standstill. Grouper immediately came under attack from patrol boats and aircraft, and departed the scene, taking one last look at 700 Japanese soldiers being taken off the stricken vessel.
What they didn’t see, however, was that those soldiers had battened down the hatches over the holds as they left. In those holds, trapped and waiting to drown in appalling conditions of filth, disease, and malnutrition were 1,816 British Prisoners of War who had been captured at the fall of Hong Kong nine months earlier.
None need have died, but only 748 returned to Britain alive. This is the story of the ship, the submarine, the men, and the impact on their families.
It is also a timeless story of everyday heroism, survival, and humanity.
