China Heavyweight's production team Q&A with audiences at Lumiere Pavilions, a cinima in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, 7 Dec, 2013. [Photo by Wang Yu /chinadaily.com.cn]

The documentary film is an integral part of mature film market. However, the documentary film market has ridden a rocky road in China.

"Documentary films are extremely popular on television, but mainly the ones on television are very safe subjects. A Bit of China, for example, was very successful but it says very little about the emotional depth of the Chinese people," Clarke told China Daily

Clarke expected the film to affect domestic cinemas too. "The reason why I hope this film succeeds at the box office is because if it does succeed, I think Chinese film distributors will finally understand that they can make money and have success with films that are documentaries, which focus on social themes," said Clarke.

Over the past year, the producers of China Heavyweight have made every effort to get the film into domestic cinemas, while they still did not raise enough money for releasing and publicizing it.

"Compared with commercial films, we don't have a superstar as a stunt to gain media and audiences' attention and do not have abundant money to promote the film," said Han.

"We have to seek to build long-term collaboration with those cinemas who appreciate us and who have cultivated a group of audiences to watch documentary film," Han said.

"Actually, it created a new approach for an art film's theatrical release. We hope the new beginning of China Heavyweight can make the Chinese documentary film market step into a new stage," she added.