How a seed grew into Flowers

Film director Zhang Yimou says the script of The Flowers of War is the best he's encountered.

Based on Yan Geling's 2005 novella of the same title, the film tells the story of an American priest, a group of Chinese schoolgirls, prostitutes and soldiers finding refuge in a church and risking their lives as they struggle to survive the Nanjing Massacre in 1937.

Yan says the core of the story germinates from the diaries of Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary renowned for saving the lives of many women at the Ginling Girls College during the Nanjing Massacre.