Festival Note
Following the sudden death of his sister-in-law, Thien (Le Phong Vu) travels to the jungles of rural Vietnam in search of a long-lost brother. What follows is a journey of spiritual discovery through the mystical landscape of his nation. In long, fluid takes, Thien Am Pham’s debut feature creates a meditative, at times hallucinatory space that examines our relationship with death and the afterlife.
Kasunod ng biglaang pagkamatay ng kanyang hipag, si Thien (Le Phong Vu) ay naglakbay sa mga kagubatan ng Vietnam upang mahanap ang kanyang kapatid na matagal nang nawawala. Abng sumunod ay paglalakbay na espirituwal na dumadaan sa mystical landscape ng kanyang bansa. Gamit ang mga mahahabang, tuloy-tuloy na takes, gumagawa si Thien Am Pham ng isang mapagnilay-nilay, kung minsan ay hallucinatory na space na sumusuri sa ating relasyon sa kamatayan at sa kabilang buhay.
Pham Thien An is a film director, producer and screenwriter, born in Nov 1989 (Lam Dong Province, Vietnam). After four years of undergraduate studies in Information Technology at Lotus University, Ho Chi Minh City, he realized his interest in cinematography and filmmaking. In recent years, he has won several film awards in Vietnam. In 2015, he moved to Houston, Texas (USA) and continued working as a freelance filmmaker. His short film THE MUTE (2018) has travelled across several film festivals (Winterthur, Palms Spring, Uppsala, Encounters…). And also, this year he shot STAY AWAKE, BE READY was supported by CJ Short Film Making Project.
Vietnamese director Pham Thien An won the Camera d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell. It marked just the second Vietnamese film directed by a Vietnamese filmmaker to screen at Cannes, where it played in Directors’ Fortnight.