Discoveries from Vietnam World Cinema

An amazing theatre performance of animals, and how to behave in an audience.

My Anh is a caring mother, she took care of her daughter Hannie. As the story went on, things took an unexpected route.

Utilizing the banality of Vietnamese state radio broadcasts, The Story of Ones gives a face and a sense of place to the unseen and offers a personal counterpoint to the officially sanctioned. Like entering a roomful of stories, the viewer steps into an unfamiliar space guided only by the sound of the radio tuning in to lifestyle programming, call-in shows and radio dramas. The portraits and settings layered atop the aural landscape create questions, provide humor, offer context and withdraw explanation of what once seemed clear before entering the room.

Montage of Marie-Laure De Decker’s work in Vietnam

Two young squids learn to defend themselves...

A father ropes in his son for exploits using his DIY ‘memory eraser’ van in this sci-fi comedy on their one-night adventure.

A man suffers from a recurring vision of the pregnant woman he killed in a car crash.

“Tan” is a shortfilm written & directed by La Zung, inspired by the people and the events surrounding him. The story is about an unnamed relationship.

Whilst visiting an exhibition, a man is mystified by the photograph of a model whose eyes resemble that of an old flame many years ago.

In a ship's container, a man cannot put himself to sleep. He is, in fact, on a night flight across continents. Jet-lagged and overwhelmed by time's lassitude, the man relapses into his innermost memories of other places and times. There, in the container, he meets his teenage self, who is remembering his childhood experience as a refugee living in a segregated camp in Hong Kong. They talk, confront, and reproach each other over their mother's coin.

This short film from Nguyen Tran Trung Quan and Denis Dang tells the complicated love triangle of King Vu Linh (Denis Dang), his concubine Lam Ngọc (Phurong Gian) and personal guard Hắc Thiên (The Thinh).

In this non-dialogue tale, taking place along the coast of Vietnam, a mermaid is rescued from the fish market by a fisherman. As the hero carries her back to the ocean, they are joined by two jolly seahorses. Upon her wake at the beach, the mermaid performs a sensual dance. But her joy is cut short: the waves have other plans.

The film opens with the fictional narrative of a Vietnamese-Khmer construction worker who specializes in brise-soleil, the concrete lattices for shading and ventilating buildings that, in cities like Ho Chi Minh City (before 1976 named Saigon), unite a traditional Vietnamese building technique with a modern material linked to US domination. The film’s second half, set during the 18th century’s feudal wars, centers on a folkloric love story between a Vietnamese medicinal healer and a Khmer woman that unfolds around the symbolic significance of a durian (or “thouren”) fruit, a major product of the Mekong Delta.

The collection of urban strange stories

A lonely young girl, withdrawn into a room filled with childhood comforts and fried chicken, eagerly awaits her birthday in a princess dress she can no longer fit into—forcing her to confront herself and embark on a reluctant journey of change.

A young girl, consumed by loneliness and a sense of disconnection, sets out in search of an ideal partner to share her life. During her journey, she encounters a strange young man wandering the streets at night—and decides he will be her next choice.

A music documentary from Hà Anh Tuấn.

A principled, exemplary Ward Chairman, who has spent his life sacrificing for his family, retires but refuses to settle down—harboring a youthful dream of running a mobile tattoo truck. With no support from his loved ones, he leaves home and fatefully crosses paths with a reckless, hot-headed Gen Z tattoo artist. Despite their vast generational and personality differences, can this unlikely duo turn their shared passion into something meaningful?

‘The Scattered Body or A World Unclouded by Dust’ explores fragmented histories and the invisible work to care for archival objects from a Vietnamese community archive in Hackney to a state film archive in Hanoi. Moving through the archives and their systems of care, the body is both a material and medium to explore the multiple lives of archival objects, the spaces that contain them and the ecstatic labour that sustains them.

Young women from the countryside dream of becoming workers in the city of Hanoi. Having travelled far by bus, they find themselves stuck in a limbo between temporary and low-paying jobs even after paying high job agency fees. Stemming from the first Vietnamese edition of French documentary workshop Ateliers Varan, Worker’s Dream exposes the struggle of the working class in a cut-throat capitalistic environment, where profit is synonymous with progress. It attempts to portray female characters as both juggling with their lives and having autonomy through direct interaction with the camera. Walking while they dream and dreaming while they walk, these women bear witness to a seemingly futuristic and bygone Vietnam, and to them, in their words, “(I thought I was lost in) another world.” Worker’s Dream was the debut feature of Trần Phương Thảo, a notable figure of Vietnamese independent documentary following in the cinéma-vérité practice.

Since his lover commits suicide after contracting HIV from him, Thien, a seropositive gay man isolates himself from society, lets his health go and prays daily for forgiveness of his guilt. Little does he know that his prayer has been secretly answered in the form of a young stranger whom he encounters and who stays with him despite knowing his health status.

Documentary about Vietnam after the liberation of Saigon.

Singer Khiet Dan is the concubine of millionaire Nguyen in Da Lat city, they have a son in common. One day, Thu, the elder wife, informed Khiet Dan that Nguyen had died suddenly.

Dear Mom tells the story of Song, a 11 year-old Hmong girl who has been trying to come to term with her mother’s absence in the last six years, while growing up in the Northwestern mountains. Presenting as a letter written by Song, the film offers a look into the emotional hardships as well as the social challenges that children who come across such unfortunate circumstances endure yet still are managing to overcome.

With just a few hours before heading to the airport, a kind-hearted couple agreed to babysit a newborn baby from their neighbor. Little did they know, shortly thereafter, they discovered that the baby had passed away since... A thrilling and heart-wrenching story unfolded in the fateful evening at their old apartment building. The couple had to rack their brains to escape this dire situation, while also uncovering the culprit who pushed them into this predicament.

While attempting to fix an old inherited camera, the filmmaker reflects on his bond with his parents, along with his attraction to images.

Tu Thuc saved a girl and they fell in love.

The main storyline revolves around the love triangle Dzung - Linh - Ngoc, accompanied by friendship relationships among Saigon youth in the last years of the war.

a film by Ta Minh Duc

Unbalanced is about a civil servant with great integrity who spends most of his time to expose crime in his company, so he can’t meet the demand of his young beautiful wife. He has to face continuously challenging situations. He is accused of serious guilt and they sentence criminals to death, simultaneously his wife has an affair with his best friend. What can he do to prove his innocence?

A poetic glimpse of life in Vietnam War

Duong and Tho are two military intelligence officers tasked with investigating enemy positions. They arrive in a rural area and meet Kien, a guerrilla fighter. Kien's wife, who deeply loves her husband, fears that if he continues his activities, he will be targeted by terrorists, leading to the destruction of their family's happiness. For this reason, she tries to stop her husband and clashes with Tho.

My Father's Truck is a part coming-of-age part road film about 10-year-old Mai Vy as she skips school one day to help her father with his passenger truck for hire.

Huy, a promising young cook, was fired from the five-star restaurant where he worked by his boss, jealous of his talent. Without any more income, he still has to take care of his younger student sister. At the same time, Thang, a childhood friend, resurfaces. Although they didn't part on very good terms the last time they met, they ended up starting a catering business together. As they work together and face different obstacles, their feelings begin to change.

The first Vietnamese animated film, based on a polemical poem from Ho Chi Minh.

A South Vietnamese soldier deserts the army and comes back to find his girlfriend, only to find out she has moved to Saigon. Dejected, he leaves to seek hiding in Da Lat, where he befriends an amateur singer with a special voice.

This hidden masterpiece, a hallmark of “instant noodle cinema” is a story of love, music, loss, and resilience, featuring Mai, a young woman who loses her sight in a fireworks accident and must navigate the pain of her father’s thirst for revenge, while holding on to the emotional strength that music offers. The film culminates in a whimsical, moving musical finale set in the rain, a moment of joy and transcendence.

I didn’t realize how much you mean to me until you were gone. Everything reminds me of you. I am lost without you. I can only be whole again once you are back with me. Without the guide of her “lost love”, Thuy is on the verge of death by boredom. Aimless and indecisive. Having no agenda, she finds odd ways to entertain herself in the bustling city of Saigon, Vietnam.

Chronicles a Cambodian Australian kink educator's journey of healing through Shibari, exploring safe spaces and mindful approaches to transformation.

In French colonial Vietnam, a nervous young woman has to satisfy the brutal General’s taste for a traditional dish to save her family from capital punishment.

In early 20th-century North Vietnam, an impoverished woman is chastised by her parents for giving birth out of wedlock and has to sell her baby to evade punishments from the villagers. No longer able to bear the agony, she flees her hometown to find the lover who has abandoned her. A series of misfortunes and violations afterwards soon push the woman into a circle of violence and treachery.

A famous Vietnamese modern folk opera from the composer Trần Hữu Trang starring Lệ Thủy and Minh Vương as star-crossed lovers separated by class and prejudices.

One day, Tung Nhan was shocked to discover that he had an illegitimate son with his ex-lover many years ago. If he admitted the child, he would be involved in a scandal, and his career as a famous TV show MC/director could be ruined. But remembering that he was also an orphan, Tung Nhan decided not to let his son be alone. Unfair things started to happen when father and son reunited...

In 1960s South Vietnam, an eight-year-old boy finds refuge in his family's cinema, drawing hope from the films he watches as he comes of age amid a divisive war.