Deng's 1979 US visit captured in film(2)

Left: Deng talks with then US President Jimmy Carter in the White House on Jan 29, 1979. Right: The poster for the documentary Mr. Deng Goes to Washington. Xinhua

Nevertheless, Fu made only 50 million yuan ($8.14 million) in ticket sales then. He was reluctant to predict the box-office performance of his latest work.

Interviews are weaved into the film, and they include former US president Jimmy Carter and his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski as well as other witnesses from both countries who participated in the visit.

"I was really cheered when President Carter told me that period of history was also appreciated by the American public," Fu says.

"He also expected the film to be eventually screened in America."

When the producers chose the current English title, which is a play on the 1939's classical Hollywood drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, they may have a future American audience in mind.

Its original Chinese title is Xuan Feng Jiu Ri, which can roughly be translated as "nine days in a whirlwind".

"The nine days were significant, informing the world of a new China and Chinese people's strong wish to realize modernization," says Gao Yi, head of executive office from the Party Literature Research Center of the CPC Central Committee.

"The visit opened the gate for our country, and greatly influenced the world order. The film will serve an important education function to encourage today's audience to realize their dreams."

Yu Minhong, the founder of the English-education colossus New Oriental Education and Technology Group, who was also interviewed for the film, is emotional recalling Deng, and says he will recommend the film to all his students and employees.

"If it were not for Deng's visit establishing the bilateral relationship, English departments in Chinese universities would not have immediately increased their enrollment, and I would probably not have been able to become an English major at Peking University in 1980," he says.

"Or, there would not be New Oriental."

As the trailer says: "History is more wonderful than fiction."