Film series: ‘On the banks of the Mekong’

Why do we know so little about Vietnamese cinema? How can we close this gap, which remains despite the efforts of new generations of filmmakers?

Tranh Ang Hung (Da Nang, 1962) presented his first film, The Scent of Green Papaya (1992), and in it he revealed a new Vietnam to us and won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 1993. The film also received a Best Foreign Film nomination at the Oscars. Despite considering himself as a displaced person living in France, Tranh Ang Hung stated at the time that Vietnam meant a lot to him because it was the source of his most primitive emotions. Neither cinema nor the visual arts in Vietnam can be deemed alien to the country's history, as demonstrated by the eight titles included in this selection, which cover three decades of unjustly unknown cinematographic production, from 1993 to 2023. The series begins with the most recent film, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023), and ends with one of the most representative films in the history of Vietnamese cinema, both nationally and internationally, The Scent of Green Papaya. The Mekong is a river of life and death, a unique witness to regional and former colonial conflicts, but also to the recent history of a country preparing for a promising future, as portrayed by the five filmmakers participating in Mekong 2030 (2020), a work that travels through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and their cultures before flowing into the China Sea.

The series is organised by Casa Asia and Cinemes Girona.

Screening programme:

Thursday 13 June at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (2023)
Saturday 15 June at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: Blood Moon Party (2020)
Saturday 22 June at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: Mekong 2030 (directors: Anocha Suwichakornpong, Kulikar Sotho, Anysay Keola, Pham Ngoc Lan and Sai Naw Kham, 2020, 93 min, drama)
Thursday 27 June at 10.30 pm on Betevé: Song Lang (2018)
Saturday 13 July at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: Goodbye Mother (2019)
Saturday 20 July at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: The Third Wife (2018)
Saturday 27 July at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: Father and Son (2017)
Saturday 7 September at 8 pm at Cinemes Girona: The Scent of Green Papaya (1993)