I have previously written a post about the Chinese movie “Aftershock” by Feng Xiaogang. A few days ago, I finally watched this movie and it has been a wonderful experience. It really tugged at my heartstrings and I just could not help tears from welling up in my eyes.

"Aftershock" movie poster

�Aftershock� is not your typical disaster flick but more of a family melodrama revolving around perennial themes of love, choices, human trauma, pain and forgiveness. The movie has a number of serious tear jerker moments, it tells a very touching story and it will have you thinking about it long after.

“Aftershock” is a fictional story set during a real-life event and benefits from the unflinching powerhouse portrayal of the director’s actress wife Xu Fan as a mother who was caught in a heart-wrenching dilemma of choosing between saving her son or her daughter during the atrocities of natural disaster. It is a strong, textured drama with very decent CGI work that doesn’t detract from the primary focus of building on themes of guilt, abandonment, closure and redemption

Yuan Ni (Xu Fan), the mother who is the focus of the movie, lost her husband in the Tangshan Earthquake in 1976 and, forced to make the difficult decision between saving her son Fonda or her daughter Fan Teng, she chose her son. What she didn�t know was that her daughter overheard her decision and survived the calamity. The daughter Fan Teng suffered from the painful memory of her mother’s decision to abandon her and was traumatised by this childhood experience.

Mother frantically searching for her daughter and son

Mother carrying her seriously injured son to seek medical attention not realising that her daughter had also survived the calamity.

The daughter all alone after regaining consciousness

Fan Teng was adopted by a couple from the People’s Liberation Army and grew up in comfortable conditions, while her mother and her twin brother (who lost an arm in the quake) struggled to get by back in Tangshan.� The story follows the diverging path of the siblings (who are twins) as they grow up, as well as the rough experience faced by her mother.

Fan Teng adopted by a military couple

When the Sichuan earthquake struck in 2008, Fan Teng volunteered to join the rescue team and returned from Canada to her homeland China. As she witnessed the tribulations people suffered, she finally unlocked the pain she had felt all these years and found forgiveness for her mother. She was finally reunited with the mother and twin brother after 32 years.

The daughter Fan Teng, now an adult, returning to China to help out during the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake

Let me warn you again that this is a movie that will really tug at your heartstrings and bring tears to your eyes. Make sure you have tissue paper with you when you watch this movie!

Since its nationwide premiere on July 22 and playing on an unprecedented 4,000-plus screens in China, Feng Xiaogang’s disaster drama “Aftershock” has taken just two weeks to become the most profitable Chinese-language film ever, setting the all-time domestic box office record for a Chinese film with RMB 532 million ($79 million) in ticket sales. By taking the number one spot, “Aftershock” has unseated the 2009 star-studded propaganda movie “The Founding of a Republic,” a movie marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which earned RMB 420 million ($62 million).

The film is a tearjerker, about a mother’s three-decade-long struggle with the emotional repercussions of the 1976, 7.8-magnitude devastating Tangshan earthquake, which killed more than 250,000 people, and then the same, now broken family, reuniting in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that left more than 85,000 dead or missing.�The movie examines the aftermath of the earthquake through the story of a present-day mother’s three-decade journey to an emotional reunion with the daughter she thought she had lost to the disaster.

“Aftershock” also set a new box office record when it earned RMB 36.2 million on its first day, the most ever made by a locally made movie on opening day. �Aftershock�, with a budget of more than US$20 million, quite hefty by Chinese standards, is also the first Chinese-directed movie to be screened in IMAX theaters.�About half of the budget was provided by the Tangshan city government.

As the first Chinese film to be seen on IMAX screens, “Aftershock” represents the company�s investment in China. With the film’s success, IMAX Corp. expects to have 57 screens in operation in China by 2012.

China’s all-time box office champion is James Cameron’s sci-fi epic “Avatar,” which raked in $204 million this year, smashing the previous record held by disaster film “2012.”

Although little known in the West, Feng has directed a string of Chinese hits, including the comedies “If You Are the One” and “Big Shot’s Funeral,” along with the Chinese Civil War saga “Assembly.”

Feng Xiaogang

Also released in IMAX format, the movie was a technical breakthrough for the Chinese film industry, drawing on help from visual effects experts from South Korea and the post-production division of French media company Technicolor.

New Zealand’s Weta Workshop � the Oscar-winning design company behind the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy � advised on miniature models that doubled for 1976 Tangshan.

This is the second crown for Feng, whose 2008 romantic comedy “If You Are the One” earned RMB 350 million, a new record for Chinese cinema before it was outdone by the all-star epic “The Founding of a Republic” in 2009 with RMB 420 million.

I seldom watch movies made in China but �Aftershock� is one movie that I look forward to watching!