Configuring the Memories of Second World War in Two Chinese films: The Sinking of Lisbon Maru (2024) and Dongji Rescue (2025)

Abstract

This article examines how contemporary Chinese cinema reconfigures the memory of the Second World War through a comparative analysis of The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (2024) and Dongji Rescue (2025), two films centered on the same historical incident yet radically different in form, aesthetics, and ideological orientation. Drawing on theories of postmemory, multidirectional memory, and moral spectatorship, the study analyzes how Fang Li’s participatory documentary filmmaking reconstructs the Lisbon Maru tragedy as a transnational, ethical project of remembrance grounded in familial testimony, embodied investigation, and humanitarian witnessing. In contrast, Dongji Rescue transforms the event into a nationalist war epic that privileges Chinese savior narratives, heroic masculinity, and graphic violence, aligning closely with contemporary state commemorative discourse. Through close textual analysis, the article interrogates how each film negotiates the tensions between nationalism and transnationalism, historical trauma and commercial spectacle, and private mourning and official memory. By placing these two films in dialogue, the article argues that Chinese WWII cinema operates as a dynamic and contested memory field in which historical meaning is continually reconstructed rather than fixed. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that cinematic representations of the Lisbon Maru incident illuminate broader struggles over how China’s role in the global Anti-Fascist War is remembered, moralized, and communicated in the present.