'Comfort Women' documentary airs in U.S.

A Chinese documentary which looks at lives of surviving "comfort women" is gaining positive reviews in the United States.

"Twenty Two" hit the screens in North America on September 8, 2017. The documentary has earned praise from the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Herald and The Washington Post, among others.

A poster for Chinese documentary "Twenty Two," a film detailing the last-known living "comfort women" in China.[File Photo: Weibo]

The documentary has already earned 100 million yuan in China, the first documentary in China to achieve this.

"Twenty Two" tells the life stories of 22 women, the last known Chinese survivors of at least 200,000 women from China, Korea and the Philippines who were taken as sex slaves by the Japanese military during World War II.

Collectively the victims were known as "comfort women."

"Giving voice to these overlooked but courageous souls," Chinese director Guo Ke shows no attempt to "exhume the nightmare in gory detail." Instead, his patient camera "records these slow-moving, wrinkled wraiths, going about their daily lives with family or in senior-citizen residences, making delicious-looking soup or commenting about the new stray cat in their neighborhood," the Film Journal International review exclaims.

The review from The Boston Herald notes that in many cases they "cut themselves off from speaking or refuse entirely to speak of the treatment they received when they were little more than adolescents," their tears in the film "making events that occurred over 70 years ago seem like yesterday."

The Washington Post has praised the movie as having taken "a quiet, deliberate approach" and kept "a tactful distance," showing beautiful respect for the women and their suffering.

"Slow-moving and sad, 'Twenty Two' isn't easy to watch, but it isn't meant to be," wrote the Los Angeles Times.