Think buys 'Nanking' docu

Film rolls out in limited realease later this year

By DADE HAYES

'Nanking' focuses on Westerners who provided refuge to Chinese amid atrocities commited by the Japanese military.

ThinkFilm has acquired North American rights to "Nanking," the Sundance doc about Japan's invasion of Nanking, China, just before WWII.

Following several more festival stops, the film will be rolled out in limited fashion late this year. One fest screening will be in Hong Kong later this month, amid angry local reaction to the plan announced by right-leaning Japanese filmmakers to make a film that will seek to deny many of the accounts of Chinese suffering.

"Nanking," produced by AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis and co-directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman ("Twin Towers"), focuses on the efforts of a small group of unarmed Westerners who established a safety zone where more than 200,000 Chinese found refuge.

Docu blends interviews with Chinese survivors, archival footage, the testimony of Japanese soldiers, plus staged readings of the Westerners' letters and diaries as performed by a cast including Jurgen Prochnow, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Dorff and Mariel Hemingway.