“The project is aimed to include the stateless men, women, and children of the Mekong in the process. This are some people’s real lives,” the filmmaker adds. “My collaborators and I, we are aware that this is not our story. The project is at an early stage of development. It is set in a floating, stateless community on the Mekong, where a little girl tries to keep everyone together while the adults fall out over the purchase of new identities that help them move ashore. The filmmaker’s Singapore Lab project “The River Knows Our Names,” follows on from the documentary. “That ambitious idea yielded nothing, but my encounter with this community led to an impromptu short documentary, ‘Down The Stream’.” “I chanced upon a stateless community on the Mekong in Long Xuyen city in 2014, when I tried my hands at documenting the impacts of the hydroelectric dams upstream on people’s lives,” says the filmmaker. Writing credits include “A Brixton Tale” and “The Girl from Dak Lak.” Mai Huyen Chi was editor-in-chief at MSN Vietnam, but decided to switch careers and studied for a masters degree in screenwriting in London. The team attended the Busan Asian Project Market where the project received the ArteKino International Award. The project is currently in the last stages of development and has begun the financing stage. By borrowing these people’s life, I hope to introduce a different chapter of Vietnamese history while expressing some of my own repressed emotions.” The country’s struggle at the backdrop of the story parallels these children’s fight for their independence from the oppressions of bigger forces. Set during the French Resistance War in Vietnam, the children are searching for themselves in a shifting culture that is losing bits and pieces of its culture along the way. “This real story raises awareness on the issues of dedicated roles of women that I could relate to. “Women in peril has been a trend in entertainment, the smaller the weaker the girl put in danger was, the more thrilling the performance is,” says the filmmaker. The abiding theme of the film is oppression. The film centers on the three siblings who, together, sustain their family by performing a knife throwing act.
The filmmaker’s debut feature, “If Wood Could Cry, It Would Cry Blood,” adapted from the autobiographical novel “Tam Van Phong Dao” by Vietnamese comedian Mac Can, will delve into his childhood as the middle child in a family-run traveling circus.
Linh Dan Nguyen Phan went to film school in New York and then went to Vietnam and worked as a cinematographer and also directed a few shorts. Diverse aspects of the human condition are key drivers of the projects from Vietnam selected at the Southeast Asia Film Lab, which is part of the Singapore Media Festival.
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