The Flowers Of War gets an Oscar-qualifying release in the US later this week, ready for a big awards run, with the hope the Chinese made movie may become the first fully made and funded in that country to win the big gongs. Whether it will remains to be seen, but if this trailer’s anything to go by, it’s a powerful and visually arresting movie. While it’s Chinese made, with Hero’s Yang Zhimou directing, the film is attempt to appeal to western audiences with most of it in English, with Christian Bale starring. The film sees Bale as a priest caught up in the events following the fall on Nanjing to the Japanese in 1937, with the plot revolving around a group of Chinese sex workers who volunteer to replace university students as forced escorts for invading soldiers. No UK release is currently fixed.