The Chinese mainland has entered Feng Xiaogang's Back to 1942, a drama about a famine that killed 3 million people that year, in the competition for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.

Feng's film unveils a dark chapter in modern Chinese history when, in 1942, a famine, war chaos and corruption drove residents of central Henan province on a devastating exodus.

The movie features Hollywood stars Adrien Brody as a US journalist and Tim Robbins as a priest.