Scene from The Sacrifice, portraying Chinese war heroes who took part in a brutal battle. [Photo provided to China Daily]

However, The Sacrifice took very little time. Liang Jing, the film's producer and Guan's wife, says Guan drafted a 400-word synopsis in a short time, deciding the film would unfold from three perspectives－the Chinese troops, a US fighter pilot and several anti-aircraft gunners. Such a plan made filming more efficient with the three directors simultaneously working on their respective parts.

When Guan and Lu were shooting battle scenes in the wild in Dandong, Northeast China's Liaoning province, Guo was spending most of his time on the outskirts of Beijing working on the visual effects.

Guo, a state-of-the-art technology enthusiast, entered the directorial A-list in China with the sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth. He says his team adopted virtual photography and motion-capture techniques to visualize the battle scenes on computer, making the actual on-set shoot in Dandong easier.

Aside from racing against time, the crew had to cope with their own persistent enemy bombardment－the changeable weather－while filming in Dandong, the border city along the Yalu River facing the Korean Peninsula, which was chosen as the filming set for its landscape's resemblance to that of Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Scene from The Sacrifice, portraying Chinese war heroes who took part in a brutal battle. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In September, a typhoon had ravaged the city, bringing in floods. The crew's vehicles, loaded with props and costumes and parked on a flattened cornfield covering 200,000 square meters, were affected by the water. Most portable toilets were submerged by an overflowing river that was used to represent the Kumgang River. With a width of 60 meters and depth of 4 meters, it's a tremendous torrent where swimming is difficult.

During the hardest days of flooding, which lasted for 10 days, the crew had to suspend shooting, arranging for actors to rehearse their scenes in hotels, with chairs or tables used as "weapons" to help their imagination, recalls Liang.

With the final post-production procedure concluding just two days before its release on Oct 23, the film mobilized the industry's top talent and resources, making it the latest example of Chinese cinema's fast recovery from the COVID-19 hiatus.