Vietnamese film director brings Cannes award to Vietnam

Film director Pham Thien An, who won the Camera d’Or (Golden Camera) prize in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival for the movie ‘Ben Trong Vo Ken Vang’ (Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell), displayed the award in Ho Chi Minh City during a press briefing to introduce the film on Tuesday.

An returned to Vietnam from the U.S. to attend the event, which attracted the cast and crew of the movie as well as members of the local film industry.

The Golden Camera award stole the spotlight of the press briefing.

‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’ is one of the Vietnamese-made movies to be shown in Vietnam after its debut screening at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in May.

Vietnamese-born French film director Tran Anh Hung, who claimed the best director prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival for ‘The Pot-au-Feu’ (La Passion de Dodin Bouffant), said the screening of An’s movie in Vietnam is an important event and great encouragement.

“This is a valuable movie,” Hung said. “The movie premiered at the same time as the screening of my movie at the Cannes Film Festival, so we have yet to watch each other’s movies.”

“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is like a divine call, with its script changed and developed continuously during the film production. It features the way we acknowledge and explore our homeland—Bao Loc [in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong], and how we studied and answered questions about belief and raison d’être,” An said.

‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’ is an intimate three-hour epic of deliberate pacing.

It is a spellbinding tale of the soul’s unfathomable desire for the other-worldly, which does itself border on transcendentalism in its filmmaking and gradual blurring of apparent truth and suggested fantasy, according to film review website IndieWire.

The movie will be shown at local cinemas starting this Friday.

‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’ tells the story of a journey taken by a young man named Thien, who is tasked with delivering his sister-in-law’s body to their countryside hometown following a tragic motorcycle accident.

Amid the mystical landscapes of rural Vietnam, Thien begins a search for his older brother, who vanished years ago. 

After the debut screening of the movie at the Cannes Film Festival in May, audiences rose and stood applauding for five minutes.

By Thanh Ha & Mi Ly – Tuoi Tre News – August 9, 2023