Vietnamese movie “Việt và Nam” (known as “Viet and Nam” in English) will vie for a prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2024, as an official selection in the film fest's Un Certain Regard section, VOV reported.

The World Film Festival in Cannes is now the world's most prestigious film festival gathering international filmmakers annually, as well as its most widely publicized cultural event.

“Viet and Nam” is directed by Truong Minh Quy and will compete in the Un Certain Regard (A Certain Glance) category, which is presented to international films that tell stories in non-traditional ways.

Epicmedia Productions Inc

The movie tells a story about two coal miners Nam and Viet who are working 300 metres below ground where danger awaits and darkness prevails. Nam doesn’t want his future to continue with coal and hires someone to smuggle him into the western world. Before departing, Nam goes on a journey with Viet and his mother, who claims that Nam’s father-a Vietnamese soldier, calls out in her dreams to find his missing body.

This Vietnamese movie is an 8-country production led by the Philippines via Bradley Liew of Epicmedia and Bianca Balbuena Liew, with Patti Lapus supervising and Nguyen Thi Xuan Trang line-producing.

“Always the missing piece of the Holy Trinity of festivals. Met Director Quy in 2013 in Busan, watched his film at 11 a.m. with a hangover. Started working with him January of 2020 with a mere short synopsis. Always loved Quy's film language and him as a person. When we got this Cannes news in February, we were jumping and crying, it's crazy. Bradley was leading this project ever since I left Epicmedia and I just want to congratulate him for seeing this through til the very end, from closing the most complicated financing contracts of 8 countries and dozens of funds, to everything that you did and still do,” Balbuena-Liew wrote on her Facebook account.

Liew shared on his social media page that the film was shot in 16mm film “from the darkness of the mines to the sunshine of the towns and forests of Vietnam.”

“This film explores the love, dreams, and trauma of multiple generations of a country's children, but always through the lens of hope. And hope is what we strive to bring through cinema in today's increasingly bleak world,” he explained on his social media account.

Competing in this category are 15 films from many countries. Besides "Viet and Nam", there are also films The Dammed (Roberto Minervini), The Shameless (Konstantin Bojanov), On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni), to name a few.

Vietnamese director Truong Minh Quy.

Truong Minh Quy, 34, was born in Buon Ma Thuot city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

He is an alumnus of the 2012 Asian Film Academy (Busan International Film Festival) and 2016 Berlinale Talents. His films have been selected for a number of international film festivals and exhibitions such as the Locarno International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, IFFR, the Busan International Film Festival, and Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin.

He won the main Art Prize at the 20th VideoBrasil held back in 2017 in São Paulo. His second feature came in 2019 with The Tree House. It premiered at the Locarno Film Festival where it was acclaimed as “one of the festival’s three best premieres” by MUBI and “a singular entrancing ode to memory and filmmaking” by The Film Stage. The film went on to be screened at major festivals worldwide.

Last year, “Bên Trong Vỏ Kén Vàng” (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell) by Vietnamese director Pham Thien An, won the Camera D'or award at the Cannes Film Festival 2023.

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