In China, a big-budget movie released nationwide on Wednesday has again galvanized the emotions of Chinese over the Japanese invasion and occupation of China during World War II.

The movie, “City of Life and Death,” is set during the massacre of Nanjing in 1937, in which Japanese soldiers killed about 300,000 people, according to official Chinese estimates. Many Chinese demand that Japan apologize for the massacre, but Japan has yet to do so.

Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that Lu Chuan, the film’s director, said the movie was much harder to make than he first thought because he “had underestimated the capacity and sensitivity of that part of history.”