Revolutionary justice shown on screen

A historical courtroom drama is perhaps Chinese cinema's best gift for the nation's first Constitution Day, which falls on Dec 4. Photo provided to China Daily

A historical courtroom drama is perhaps Chinese cinema's best gift for the nation's first Constitution Day, which falls on Dec 4.

Spoiler alert: A Murder Beside Yanhe River takes the viewer back to 1937, when in Yan'an, Shaanxi province, the first widely influential public trial was held in the history of the Communist Party of China. A 26-year-old military officer, Huang Kegong, was charged with killing a female student after she rejected his marriage proposal. Huang expected Chairman Mao Zedong's amnesty, but it wasn't granted.

"It's a rare 'red' commercial film," said its director, Wang Fangfang, 35, during the movie industry's ninth Chinese Young Generation Film Forum earlier this month, when the film was screened to a small audience.

Wang is a longtime screenwriter, who released his feature-length film Champion, a biography on China's first Olympic gold medalist, Xu Haifeng, in 2012.

"It's not only a political thriller with a positive message, but involves love, ambivalent human nature and other elements that are popular among today's audience."

The film is a major breakthrough since the case hasn't been mentioned in Chinese mainstream media for decades. Hu Yaobang, a controversial name in New China's history, was the prosecutor in the trial and he is a major role in the film.

"Most of our team members are in their 30s, so it's a challenge for us to work with that unfamiliar part of history," Wang says. Shooting the film took some 45 days in unpleasant weather and tough living conditions last winter in northern Shaanxi, in the center of China's loess plateau, which was China's revolutionary base at the time of the story.

"But the conditions may have perhaps allowed us to experience what those revolutionary soldiers had endured," says Wang.