“Let’s go to Vietnam!” declared Sabrina Baracetti, president of the Far East Film Festival (FEFF) in Udine, Italy, as she wrapped up her introduction for Leon Lê's Quán Kỳ Nam (Kỳ Nam Inn). Sitting in the Teatro Nuovo, watching Quán Kỳ Nam unfold for the first time, I felt an overwhelming surge of pride.
Quán Kỳ Nam does exactly what Baracetti promised: it does not showcase the hyper-modern, rapidly developing Vietnam of today; rather, it captures a deeply tactile Vietnamese essence, distilled down to the flicker of a single oil lamp or the hum of a rusty electric fan. Sharing this experience with an international audience, I felt a profound connection to how our people were portrayed with kindness, sensitivity, and a resilient sense of community, bonding to rebuild a post-war nation. Crucially, Leon allows his characters to be beautifully flawed. They are petty, guarded, and endearingly humane. These are people tentatively navigating the unfamiliar terrain of peacetime, having spent years bracing for the worst. All these quiet, lingering conflicts are gently woven through a forbidden romance between a young, rising intellectual and a widow tied to the former regime.
Quán Kỳ Nam actress Ngô Hồng Ngọc (second from left), director Leon Lê (second from right) and Far East Film Festival's Vietnamese programmer, Nguyên Lê (far right).
Nguyên Lê, the Vietnamese programmer for FEFF, notes that he seeks films “where the essence is local but the expression is global.” As he rightly pointed out, Quán Kỳ Nam “does precisely this.” It takes the universally understood geometry of a love triangle and embeds it within the highly specific context of 1970s Vietnam. It makes the mundane, quiet moments of human existence feel entirely refreshing, captivating international audiences without ever resorting to tired, exoticised tropes.
But the fervor surrounding Quán Kỳ Nam in Udine did not stem solely from its narrative heart. Much of the heat generated by the film was a triumph of pure craft: it marks the first Vietnamese feature in two decades to be shot entirely on 35mm analogue celluloid.
The struggles of pioneering
As the 35mm celluloid process constantly evolves, it is no longer the fragile art form of decades past. While it remains a revered staple in major industries in Hollywood and Europe, prized for its unique texture and grain, the reality in Vietnam is starkly different. For feature-length cinema, it has been 20 years since a production was shot entirely on 35mm. In television, the gap is even wider. The local industry migrated to digital over three decades ago, leaving analogue equipment either hopelessly outdated, broken down, or entirely unusable. This infrastructural void posed a monumental challenge for Leon Lê and his team.
Recalling the genesis of the project, Leon acknowledges the sheer luck of securing unwavering support from his financial backers right from the start. “I knew that with the budget I had, I was going to shoot on film,” he explains. “The reason the investors agreed to support the project was mostly that they loved my first film, Song Lang. They fully understood that a project like Quán Kỳ Nam is extremely risky commercially.”
However, securing the generous funding to shoot on analogue film only solved half the battle. While financially possible, it was practically impossible logistically. The infrastructure simply did not exist. At least, not until director of photography Bob Nguyễn (Quán Kỳ Nam, Song Lang) proved it could be done. This required working from the ground up.
“The DOP had to train the rest of the crew,” Leon remembers. “Young filmmakers haven't worked with film, haven't practiced with it, don't know how to load film, and don't know how to attach the magazine to the camera. The DOP had to put them through a training process.”
The education extended far beyond the film set. “Then we had to collaborate with a film developing lab and teach them,” Leon adds. “They were used to developing 35-exposure photo rolls, so how do you develop a five-minute reel? But I was very confident in my team.”
So, driven by the uncompromising dedication of Leon and his crew, Vietnam finally has a new 35mm feature, offering a deeply textured, organic cinematic experience that cuts through years of crisp, sterile digital imagery.
A still from Quán Kỳ Nam.
A celluloid renaissance or a lone exception?
Leon remains resolute in his commitment to the medium and expresses unwavering faith in his team for future 35mm projects. “For all my upcoming projects, I still plan to shoot on film and continue to develop and scan in Vietnam,” he reveals. His confidence lies in local ingenuity: “Generally speaking, Vietnamese people are very smart. They tinker with things out of curiosity and eventually figure it out. It's just that they are hesitant, so they haven't done it yet. But if they want to, they can.”
Yet, Leon harbors no illusions that his personal obsession as an auteur will revolutionize the wider Vietnamese film industry. “There will be crazy people like me who want to do it, but to call it a recovery or renaissance of celluloid — probably not,” he admits. He believes a problem also lies in the current state of mainstream Vietnamese cinema: “Looking at the Vietnamese film market right now, it's still struggling. The timeframe of a production from concept to scripts, casting, shooting, post-production, release... they do it so quickly and carelessly. How could they invest in [analogue filmmaking]? It's both risky and costly. You have to love the outcome and love the process to be able to endure it.”
Nguyên Lê echoes these concerns regarding the state of the industry, noting the friction between analogue filmmaking and modern Vietnamese sensibilities. “It is unfortunate the format is more costly and time-consuming in a society more careful with our spending and our timing, and in a culture that has a tendency to treat the latest as being the greatest,” he observes.
However, the programmer remains hopeful about the ripple effect of Leon Le's uncompromising ethos. He predicts these formats will “live on” in the short film arena, citing Chín (Ripe) as a recent example, or that the rigorous storytelling methods of Leon and his crew will be “studied and carried over,” ultimately “paving the way for higher quality, more internationally competitive productions.”
Listening to their reflections leaves me with a lingering sense of unease. The stark divide between independent and commercial filmmaking in Vietnam is undeniable. They are funded differently, crafted differently, and targeted at entirely different demographics. To succeed domestically, mainstream commercial products often rely heavily on familiar character tropes and highly specific cultural shorthand, what Nguyên terms “doubly-local expression.”
This approach stands in direct opposition to Nguyên's “local essence, global expression” attribute that makes Quán Kỳ Nam so universally translatable. Until the wider industry learns to bridge this gap by placing artistic rigor over rushed, hyper-localized commercialism, Vietnamese cinema will, unfortunately, continue to struggle to secure its rightful place on the international stage.
The looming threat: AI, VFX vs. The soul of cinema
In Quán Kỳ Nam, eagle-eyed viewers might occasionally spot modern architecture lurking in the corners of street scenes or looming in the distance during rooftop shots. When asked about this, Leon is refreshingly blunt. “I really hate VFX,” he admits. “Because there are special effects done practically that look absolutely amazing compared to VFX. Especially with those action and martial arts movies in Hollywood right now, they abuse VFX so much, and it looks very fake. So, not everything new is good; it has to be appropriate.”
And his philosophy works entirely for the world of Quán Kỳ Nam. For an international audience, these modern anomalies easily go unnoticed. More importantly, attempting to digitally patch these details to perfect the “vintage” illusion would be disastrous. A rough, modern VFX job would glaringly stand out against the rich, organic grain of the 35mm film, completely ruining the meticulously crafted, authentic 1970s Vietnam they worked so hard to build.
To my mind, VFX should be a tool used to enhance a filmmaker’s vision, not a synthetic bandage used to cover mistakes or cut corners in production. But the creeping reliance on Artificial Intelligence is far more insidious; it is an unacceptable intrusion into the creative process that is already pushing genuine artists out of work. We are currently witnessing a dangerous era where AI is being hastily embraced for cheap commercial gain, all while legislation painfully struggles to catch up with the harm being done to genuine artists.
Yet, when asked about the threat of AI replacing filmmakers, Leon remains resolutely confident. “They can never do my job,” he declares. For him, the creative process is intrinsically human. Only he possesses the vivid, visceral memories of his mother and aunts visiting his grandfather at a post-war re-education camp, the exact memories that served as the primary, direct inspiration for the character Kỳ Nam. There is no technology in the world, present or future, capable of synthetically recreating that level of lived trauma, personal emotion, and artistic vision.
Ngô Hồng Ngọc (left), director Leon Lê (right) at the Far East Film Festival.
However, programmer Nguyên offers a sobering reality check regarding the wider Vietnamese industry. “I don’t believe other filmmakers share Leon’s sentiments, but I do hope to be proven wrong,” he notes. “As I noted in my essay and industry report for this year’s FEFF, many stages of the cinematic creative process in Vietnam right now feature AI, with some finding it a gift from above and others deeming it a hasty shortcut.”
The human resistance
Leon's observation on the mainstream Vietnamese machine is entirely valid, yet there is a sliver of hope he might be overlooking. We are currently witnessing an infiltration: a new wave of independent filmmakers successfully making their commercial debuts. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ recent regulation changes, strictly mandating human authorship for any Oscar submission, serve as a monumental, institutional pushback against generative AI.
Ultimately, cinema is a medium built entirely on human vulnerability. I wholeheartedly echo programmer Nguyên’s resounding final sentiment: “Give me imperfect films with soul — and I like quite a few! — any day.”
Photos courtesy of Far East Film Festival.
