The City of Life and Death director Lu Chuan will direct an eight-minute theme film of the China Pavilion of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Lu's assistant said on Saturday.

The 38-year-old director said the film would display "China's urbanization process over the past three decades."

The film will be shown in a cinema on the top story of the 49-meter high China Pavilion.

Although Lu is adept at documentary films, he said this time he would try a "poetic" one.

"During the eight minutes, it is a mission impossible to record the history of Chinese urbanization," he said.

Instead, the short film will present the audience a sense of the "massive scale and grand style" of the urbanization process, and the "unprecedented spirit and strong conviction" of the country's urban constructors, Lu said.

According to Lu, the film's production team is similar to that of City of Life and Death, Known as Nanjing, Nanjing in Chinese, but all actors are new faces to the audience.

He said two leading roles of the film could represent Chinese people's "sunshine, energetic, confident and handsome" image.

Lu's talent has been greatly shown in his latest hit City of Life and Death, which took him nearly four years and cost $11 million to produce.

It is about the Nanjing massacre of Chinese civilians by the Imperial Japanese Army nearly 72 years ago.

(Xinhua News Agency August 23, 2009)