Vietnam: Last News

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Recent Asian feature films including Makbul Mubarak’s “Autobiography,” Lan Pham Ngoc’s “Cu Li Never Cries,” Nelson Yeo’s “Dreaming & Dying,” Jeremias Nyangoen’s “The Women of Rote Island” and Lyda Leak’s “The Night Curse of Reatrei” adorn the non-competitive lineup of the 2024 edition of the Blue Chair film festival in Luang Prabang, Laos. Previously known as the Luang Prabang Film Festival, the festival counts 24 features and 40 shorts in its 2024 festival. It will run Dec.

Nostalgia tends to tint our view of the past a rose-colored hue, casting a glow over intense conflict and deep angst, as if those sentiments weren’t fundamental to the experience of people alive in earlier times.

EXCLUSIVE: Indonesian horror film Dominion of Darkness has sold to 53 territories, including Taiwan (MovieCloud), Vietnam (Noori), Thailand (Shinesaeng Ad.Venture), the Philippines (Pioneer), Latin America (Mundo) and Russia (The World Pictures).

Naman Ramachandran A comprehensive trends analysis of Southeast Asian media markets reveals significant digital advertising growth and streaming platform expansion, with Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam emerging as key territories for content development and format adaptation. According to K7 Media U.K. analysis presented by the firm’s associate director, operations, Michelle Lin at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF), Indonesia stands out as the region’s most promising market, with an 8.5% annual growth rate in entertainment and media revenue.

Naman Ramachandran A new project examining the decline of Vietnam’s state-run film industry and its impact on veteran filmmakers is being developed by director Vu Minh Nghia, set for production in 2025. “Waiting for Godard” follows a young independent director who interviews former filmmakers from the Vietnam Feature Film Studio, exploring the aftermath of the studio’s 2017 sale to a transportation company – a move that left numerous industry veterans unemployed. The project is selected for Taipei’s Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) where it is part of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and Produire au Sud feature film pitch.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Purin Pictures, a non-profit film fund supporting independent cinema in Southeast Asia, has unveiled $170,000 of grants in its autumn funding round. Its reading committee chose three fiction and two documentary projects for production support and one fiction project for post-production support. The fiction films are “Daughters of the Sea,” a story of three intertwined lives, to be directed by Martika Ramirez Escobar (“Leonor Will Never Die”) and produced by Monster Jimenez and Rajiv Idnani, through Philippines company Arkeo Films; writer-director and editor Daniel Hui’s “Other People’s Dreams,” about two runaways who become invisible thieves in Singapore, produced by Tan Si En at Momo Film; and “Sitora,” by Diffan Sina Norman, a drama about the oldest member of a village community which is about to be consumed by the urban sprawl. The project is to be produced by Tara Ansley, Armen Aghaeian, Zurina Ramli through Malaysian firm Rangka Pictures. The two documentaries receiving production support of $15,000 each are “Black River,” directed by Tran Phuong Thao, and “When a Poet Goes to War,” by Myanmar’s Aung Naing Soe. With production by Swann Dubus through Varan Vietnam, “Black River” follows merchants who use old boats to set up temporary markets in the territories of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities.

EXCLUSIVE: Bangkok-based horror studio Night Edge Pictures will present Thai horror film Night Shift at the upcoming American Film Market.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rory Kennedy will receive the prestigious Pennebaker Award at the upcoming Critics Choice Documentary Awards in New York, honoring a director whose body of work includes Ethel, a film about her late mother, Ethel Kennedy, as well as Last Days in Vietnam and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.

EXCLUSIVE: Specialty distributor 3388 Films has set a November 8 release for Vietnam’s latest box office hit, The Trophy Bride (Co Dau Hao Mon), across North America and Europe, including in the UK, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Check out a trailer below.

EXCLUSIVE: John Magaro (Past Lives) has closed a deal to star opposite Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim in writer-director Kelly Reichardt’s next film, The Mastermind.

Naman Ramachandran The Philippines‘ QCinema International Film Festival has locked its 12th edition lineup, with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” — Japan’s submission for the 97th Academy Awards — set to close the November event. The festival opens with “Directors’ Factory Philippines,” an eight-filmmaker omnibus collaboration with Cannes Directors’ Fortnight that pairs Filipino directors with counterparts from across Asia.

Kyle Hausmann-Stokes’ directorial debut My Dead Friend Zoe took the Grand Jury prize for Best Feature Narrative Saturday night as the Woodstock Film Festival presented awards for its silver jubilee edition.

Jamie Lang Fremantle has closed a package deal with Spanish streamer Filmin for a slate of premium drama titles, including Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of Ingmar Berman’s “Faithless” and BAFTA-winning actress Rebecca Hall’s thriller “The Listeners,” both of which recently screened in competition at the Toronto International Film Festival. Also included in the deal are Victor Levin’s Golden Globe-nominated “Alice & Jack,” starring Domhnall Gleeson and Adrea Riseborough; Series Mania best script winner “Herrhausen – The Banker and the Bomb”; and Series Mania audience award winner “Little Bird.” “We’re deeply honored to add such high-quality titles to our eclectic catalog, which blends A-list actors and directors with independent productions of great merit,” said Filmin Head of Content and Editorial Director Jaume Ripoll.

Dave Bautista, the WWE star and actor who endorsed Kamala Harris last month, appeared in a Jimmy Kimmel Live video that took on a central tenet of Donald Trump‘s campaign — that he’s a tough guy.

Haim singer, who previously made her acting debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 film Licorice Pizza, has started production on The Mastermind, an art heist drama starring Josh O’Connor and The Drama, which also stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.The former is set during the Vietnam War and the beginning of the women’s liberation movement in America, according to The Hollywood Reporter.The latter meanwhile, focuses on a couple, played by Zendaya and Pattinson, who in the days leading up to their wedding, end up in a crisis when unexpected revelations derail what one of them thought they knew of the other.Haim’s latest roles come after it was confirmed earlier this year that she is set reunite with Paul Thomas Anderson on his next movie alongside lead stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Regina Hall.Anderson has written the script and will produce with Sara Murphy and Adam Somner, both of whom worked with the director on Licorice Pizza.Reviewing Licorice Pizza, NME awarded the 2021 movie four stars and wrote: “Casting two people who’ve never been in a movie before – let alone ever acted professionally – as your leads is a pretty spicy move, but Paul Thomas Anderson has been making spicy moves for decades now.“Even younger than Licorice Pizza’s downright radiant Alana Haim (yes, that Alana Haim), when he broke through with his 1997 rollicking porno-comedy Boogie Nights, the somewhat more wholesome Licorice Pizza sees PTA and his reels of vintage 35mm film freewheeling through the very same glowing San Fernando Valley streets as stalked by Dirk Diggler and making fully-fledged stars out of both Haim and her dazzling co-star, Cooper Hoffman.”

The Donald Trump presidential campaign’s use clips from Stanley Kubrick‘s 1987 Oscar nominated Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket has polarized those close to the pic indeed, with the late filmmaker’s daughter Vivian Kubrick declaring “Trump has my blessing” to the pic’s star Matthew Modine blasting in EW that the former POTUS has turned the anti-war feature “into a perverse, homophobic, and manipulative tool of propaganda.”

EXCLUSIVE: Vietnam’s Skyline Media has closed multiple deals on its slate heading out of Busan’s Asian Contents and Film Market (ACFM), including sales of two titles to the U.S., highlighting the growing international market for Vietnamese movies.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono co-hosting a daytime talk show for a week — a veritable Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos.That’s exactly what happened 52 years ago when the erstwhile Beatle and his wife brought peace, love and counterculture to Middle America on “The Mike Douglas Show.”Just months after “Imagination” was released, that radical week — with five shows airing Feb. 14-18, 1972 — saw Lennon and Ono chatting up guests that they had selected to spread their utopian vision in the final years of the Vietnam War.It’s a memorable moment in time that is revisited in the new documentary “Daytime Revolution” playing in theaters on Wednesday, which would have been Lennon’s 84th birthday.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief GrX Studio has set its sights on an international expansion that matches its leading position within Taiwan’s film and TV production industry. At a fast-paced event on Monday held on the margins of the Busan International Film Festival, the company detailed plans to invest some $45 million over five years into 15 Mandarin-language series and five horror films through a new fund. The launch event also included a roster of current shows from the group, which was formerly known as Greener Grass Productions. It was previously responsible for “Copycat Killer,” a series which has performed strongly for streaming giant Netflix. Taiwan actor Ning Chang and Vietnam actor Lien Binh Phat from “The Outlaw Doctor,” a crime series which is now in post-production and which GrX co-produced with Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) and Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), and Korean celebrity Jinyoung and Taiwan actress Moon Lee from “The Photo from 1977.” The title is a romance film facilitated by the Hakka Affairs Council, with script development supported by the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and is part-funded by the Hakka Public Communication Foundation. Other titles confirmed at the event included: a horror film “Trapped in Yellow”; a boys’ love (BL) feature film “Wild With You,” produced by Golden Bell Awards-winning producer Phoebe Ma; and the thriller series “The Ones I Killed and the Ones Who Killed Me,” that is currently in development and is adapted from the popular Japanese novel by Akira Higashiyama. An historical series set in Taiwan and Japan, titled “KOHAKU: The Traitor of the Night,” is to be directed by Lien Yi-chi and Kentaro Hagiwara.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Thailand’s skill with ghostly drama series gets another showing in “The Legend of Nang Nak,” which releases widely across Asia next week. Directed by Taweewat Wantha and scripted by Sorarat Jirabovornwisut, the pair behind “Death Whisperer 1 and 2,” the 30-part series portrays a ghostly love story that defies the barriers between life and death. The series hails from production firm Minds@Work and Thai terrestrial broadcast group BEC World. International sales are handled by I.E.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Two Vietnamese-flavored films in prominent festival slots this year have put the spotlight on the country’s emerging indie cinema scene. A discussion in Busan on Saturday highlighted the sector’s behind-the-scenes struggles, which center on ever-changing financing options, limited distribution and censorship. “Now is the best time to be a Southeast Asia filmmaker. We can now produce without Europe. That was not possible ten years ago,” said Bianca Balbuena, the Philippines-based lead producer on “Viet and Nam” the Truong Minh Quy-directed gay drama that debuted in Cannes this year. “More people are getting opportunities to make films.