"We wanted to know how Cameron knew about this story. Why did he film it? Why did he delete it? We had a lot of questions," says Jones, who flew to meet Cameron in New Zealand along with Schwankert.

"Cameron was very helpful. He knows so much about the Titanic. He told us that the story of Fang Lang had been a big influence on his movie. He had a lot of opinions about discrimination against Chinese people and the problems of racism," Jones says, adding that Cameron cut the scene as it looked like an unnecessary repetition of the scene with Rose and Jack, which would affect the storytelling pace.

Cameron offered free footage from his movie to the duo and became the executive producer of the documentary that retells the ship's story from a Chinese perspective.

"Every generation after the sinking of the Titanic kind of uses the ship as a way to talk about society," says Jones, adding that the disaster brought out issues such as class discrimination.

Their documentary wants to show "issues of ethnicity and nationality and how that affects people's lives".