Imagine going through the gruelling pace of an Ironman triathlon, only to be told on the final lap - with the finish line in sight - that you have been disqualified for taking a wrong turn when, in fact, you have not.
For award-winning Hong Kong director, Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting, making her new film The Soong Sisters was much like that. For two years, Cheung not only battled to get the $50 million she needed for her ambitious project but also her ideal cast. Financiers backed out, Joan Chen fell pregnant and dropped out . . . and Cheung almost gave up on finishing the film.
But she ploughed on, finally gaining the support of Golden Harvest and Japanese investors, an excellent crew and a dream cast including Jiang Wen, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng, Vivian Wu, and Wu Hsing-kuo.
When the film was signed, sealed and delivered, Cheung hit her biggest and most insurmountable hurdle: the Chinese censors at the Propaganda Department.
Dramas based on historical details are always a political landmine.
Cheung admits now she was a little naive: the sisters she picked were, after all, not your run-of-the-mill 20th century Chinese women. The lives of the Soong sisters - Ailing, Chingling and Meiling - intertwine with recent Chinese history, not only because of who they married but because of their own contribution as well.
'I put it down to insufficient understanding of the complexity of the subject matter. I thought I was only writing a simple human story but the women were not simple women,' said Cheung.