BEIJING - A film inspired by the true story of a Kuomintang (KMT) veteran's journey to Shanghai in search of his long-lost wife, will be released in cinemas on the Chinese mainland  on Thursday.

Directed and cowritten by Wang Quan'an from the mainland, the drama  "Apart Together" was the opening title at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival and won the Best Screenplay award.

"Once I saw a news item on TV about a Taiwan veteran coming to Shanghai to find his relatives. It touched me a lot. On the surface, it was just about a marriage, but it actually dealt with all our wounds from the last century," Wang said at Monday's press conference.

The film tells the story a former soldier who fled the mainland in 1949 as he returns home 60 years later in the hope of uniting with his family, only to find his wife has taken a new husband.

In 1949, the KMT Party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, was defeated in a civil war by the Communist Party of China, which later founded the People's Republic of China. Many KMT members fled to Taiwan in the aftermath of the conflict, causing many families to be split up.

"Chinese people cherish family reunions... but in some cases, reunions are not as satisfactory as we hope since it can be hard to get over the estrangement after a long separation. Nonetheless, we still believe in the pursuit of reunions," Wang said.

According to Wang, the film allegorizes the relations between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan through the relationships in a small family.