Cinema
Cánh đồng hoang
Nguyễn Hồng Sến · 1979
Synopsis
In the Plain of Reeds, a peasant couple and their baby live alone in a hut in the middle of the water and serve as liaison agents for the resistance. A helicopter returns every day above them, and each time they must disappear: slip under the water, plunge the child wrapped in a sack into it, wait for the noise to move away. Between two passes, ordinary life resumes, they fish, they eat, they laugh, and the aircraft comes back.
Context
The subject comes from a shared memory: the writer and the director had crossed this region together during the war, and had seen women plunge their children under the water when the aircraft passed. The screenplay is by Nguyễn Quang Sáng and the music by Trịnh Công Sơn. One sequence shows the American pilot the photograph of his family; they were asked to cut it, it was kept, to say that the man facing him was one too.
Who it is for
About an hour and a half, in subtitled Vietnamese. Few characters, almost no plot; everything rests on waiting and on the sound of an engine.
Prizes and reception
International Critics' Prize at the Moscow festival in 1980, gold medal at the same festival the following year, Golden Lotus at the national festival.