Cinema
Chung một dòng sông
Nguyễn Hồng Nghi · 1959
Synopsis
Two young people love each other on either side of a river that, five years earlier, became the line dividing the two Vietnams. He is in the north, she in the south; they see each other from one bank to the other without being able to meet, the crossing being forbidden and guarded. The family, the authorities of the South and the line itself stand in the way of a marriage that nothing else would prevent, and the river, which once brought them together, becomes the only thing that matters.
Context
Geography makes the plot here: the whole film rests on the distance between two riverbanks. It was signed by two directors, one from wartime documentary, the other trained in Paris, a pairing that characterises the studio's early years; the latter signed this film under a name other than the one by which he is known. The studio had neither a tradition of fiction nor equipment of its own: the cameras and film stock came from China and the Soviet Union, and the crew learned as they shot.
Who it is for
A film in Vietnamese, with limited distribution. The course of the 1954 demarcation line is necessary to follow the plot.
Prizes and reception
First feature-length fiction film of North Vietnamese cinema, and Golden Lotus in the first awards list of the national festival, which covered the years 1953 to 1965.