After his last performance earned him a very much well-deserved and long-awaited Oscar in last year’s The Fighter, it came as a bit of a surprise to discover that Christian Bale’s follow-up film would become China’s entry into next year’s Oscars, The Flowers of War.

Previously titled Nanjing Heroes and 13 Flowers of Nanjing, The Flowers of War comes from renowned director Zhang Yimou, whose credits include Hero and House of Daggers, and whose films have twice won the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

We got the incredibly powerful first trailer for the film back in October, which is definitely worth your attention, and we’ve now got three brilliant new international posters for the film to share with you, courtesy of IMP Awards.

The film is set in 1937 during the Nanking Massacre?, in the Second Sino-Japanese War?. Based on the novel The 13 Women of Nanjing, by Geling Yan, the film is based upon the life of John Magee (Bale), an American priest who helps a group of Chinese women escape their deaths during the six weeks following the Imperial Japanese Army’s invasion of the city of Nanking. (The city itself is known both as ‘Nanking’ and ‘Nanjing’.)

The UK is yet to get a release date scheduled for the film, but it is set to be released in China on 16th December, as well as getting an Oscar-qualifying run in the States before the end of the year, making it eligible for categories beyond the Best Foreign Language Film category too. With any luck, we’ll get to see it in our cinemas soon too, because it looks to be pretty immense. Without further ado, here are the great new photos for the film. As usual, click to enlarge. (Without meaning to belittle the image, which is brilliant, is it just me or does the third poster almost seem reminiscent of Indiana Jones?)