There’s no shortage of Hollywood films about Vietnam, such as Platoon to The Deer Hunter to Good Morning, Vietnam. It’s less common for westerners to come across documentaries and narrative films about this country by Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese directors.
In recognition of Asian Heritage Month, TIFF Cinematheque plans to correct this imbalance with a series called Flights: Vietnam on Film. Running from May 9 to 28, it’s a retrospective coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
The newest film in the series is Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bên trong vỏ kén vàng). This 2023 drama revolves around a man who must deliver his deceased sister-in-law’s body from Ho Chi Minh City to the family’s hometown in the countryside. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bên trong vỏ kén vàng) captured the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for best first film. It also scored a critics’ rating of 94 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer.
Pham was born in Vietnam and shuttles between Vietnam and Houston, where he has lived for many years, according to the Texas Observer.
Exodus from Vietnam
TIFF Cinematheque will also screen Ham Tran’s critically acclaimed 2006 drama Journey from the Fall. It’s about a family forced to emigrate to America 13 years after the end of the Vietnam War. Tran was born in Ho Chi Minh City and immigrated to the United States as an eight-year-old refugee with his Chinese Vietnamese parents. His thesis film as a UCLA graduate student was shortlisted for the 2004 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short.
Meanwhile, another film in the series follows a Vietnamese woman in America enamoured with love. Vietnamese filmmaker and literary theorist Trịnh T. Minh-hà and University of California, Berkeley professor Jean-Paul Bourdier’s A Tale of Love was released in 1995. This drama is based on a Vietnamese poem, “The Tale of Kieu”.
Americans return to Vietnam
Flights: Vietnam on Film will also screen Daughter from Danang. It’s a 2002 documentary about an Amerasian woman, Heidi Bub, who was adopted as a six-year-old by a religious American woman. Bub goes on a quest to find her birth mother in Vietnam, with surprising twists along the way. Daughter from Danang won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at Sundance. It also scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.
Another acclaimed film is Tony Bui’s Three Seasons. This 1999 drama captured the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic and the Audience Awards at Sundance. It’s about four people in Ho Chi Minh City, including an American searching for a daughter whom he fathered during the war. Three Seasons was the first American film made in Vietnam with local actors speaking the local language. Bui moved to the U.S. as a two-year-old.
Kay Nguyen and Buu Loc Tran’s 2017 comedy-drama The Tailor and Tham Nguyen Thi’s 2014 documentary Madam Phung’s Last Journey are also part of the series. The latter is about a troupe of transvestite singers travelling around Vietnam. The oldest film in Flights: Vietnam on Film is Hong Kong New Wave director Ann Hui’s 1982 drama Boat People, which addresses harsh realities after the country was “liberated”.
TIFF Cinematheque presents Flights: Vietnam on Film from May 9 to 28. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. Follow Charlie Smith on Bluesky @charliesmithvcr.bsky.social. Also, follow the Toronto Spark on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
