Vietnamese cinema has become much more mature and sophisticated in recent years, and Phan Dang Di has been at the forefront of the advances.

Dragons & Tigers

(France, Vietnam, 2015, 102 mins, DCP)

Director:

Phan Dang Di

CAST Do Thi Hai Yen, Le Long Hong

PROD Tre Thi Bich Ngoc, Claire Lajoumar

SCR Phan Dang Di

CAM Nguyen K Linh

ED Julie Beziau

ART DIR Nguyen The Phong

MUS Vincent Borgneul

PROD CO DNY Vietnam Productions / Acrobates Films

Vietnamese cinema has become much more mature and sophisticated in recent years, and Phan Dang Di has been at the forefront of the advances. Ever since he wrote the script for Bui Thac Chuyen’s Adrift he’s pioneered a grown-up approach to the way that social and economic themes intersect with sexual and psychological themes, and his explorations of same-sex attractions have opened the door to a small flood of Vietnamese commercial gay features. But Phan himself remains some way ahead of the pack.

As Freudians will guess from the title, Phan’s stunning new film has a lot to do with patriarchy and the penis. Around twenty years ago Vietnam’s government began trying to slow population growth by offering cash incentives to fathers to undergo vasectomies. But the scheme was open to corruption, and no-one foresaw that unmarried, fun-loving kids would sign up, just for pocket money. Phan’s protagonist Vu is a not-very-diligent student who resists his father’s order to get married, partly because he’s not ready, partly because he’s somewhat bi-curious. His hedonistic life leads him down some unexpected paths, most of which turn out to be dead ends. Why would a young man like Vu think of getting a vasectomy?

— Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival

A photography student, his playboy roommate, and a ballerina/nightclub singer make for a sexually ambiguous young trio in this lush and unhurried drama set against the neon lights and sweltering slums of turn-of-the-millennium Saigon.

Set against the neon lights and sweltering slums of Saigon, Phan Dang Di’s follow-up to SIFF 2011 favorite BI, Don’t Be Afraid! deftly captures the confusion and ennui of Vietnamese youth at the turn of the millennium. Vu (Le Cong Hoang), a fisherman’s son in his twenties, is in town to study photography, and as he wanders through the city’s alleyways and along the banks of the Saigon River for inspiration and camera fodder, he finds himself longing for his male housemate, a bartender and low-level drug dealer by the name of Thang (Truong The Vinh). Enter Van (Do Thi Hai Yen, The Quiet American), a ballerina by day and a crack cocaine-addicted nightclub performer by night, who herself has feelings for Vu. As this sexually ambiguous trio drift through their youthful disillusionment, they are confronted with the cold slap of modernity and impending adulthood—personified by Vu’s traditional father back in the Mekong Delta—in an overpopulated land whose government pays good money for sterilization. Big Father, Small Father And Other Stories is a lush, unhurried hangout film that channels “early Wong-Kar Wai and Tsai Ming-Liang, mixed with a touch of French New Wave and Thai arthouse.” — Lee Marshall, “ScreenDaily.”

Seattle International Film Festival

Director Biography

Phan Dang Di was born in 1976 in Nghe An in Vietnam. After graduating from the Hanoi University of Cinema and Theatre, he started his career as an independent filmmaker. He is currently teaching screen-writing at Hanoi National University and Ho Chi Minh City University, and is part of the new wave of filmmakers from Vietnam.