Shot on lush 16mm and attuned to the forest’s hush, this evocative film tenderly traces the life of Cao Thi Hau, a homeopath, farmer and great-grandmother. Alone in the mountains, where she communes with the soil and tends to her grandchildren, Cao navigates memory and daily life, passing on her disappearing language to her grandchildren. Guided by Truong and Graux’s poetic precision, the film gently dissolves the boundary between fiction and documentary.
Quy Truong Minh was born in Buon Ma Thuot, a small city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. His narratives and images, located between documentary and fiction, personal and impersonal, draw on the landscape of his homeland, childhood memories, and the history of Vietnam. His films have been selected for international film festivals and exhibitions such as Cannes, Berlinale, Locarno International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival, IFFR, Busan International Film Festival and Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin. His last film, “Viet and Nam’ (2024), was selected in Cannes Official Selection - Un Certain Regard. Nicolas GRAUX was born in Binche, a small town in Belgium’s former coal-mining region. His films, blending documentary and fiction, explore sociopolitical realities through immersive research and a poetic, sensitive gaze. He graduated from IAD (Institut des Arts de Diffusion) and co-founded the production company Replica in 2012. His debut feature, “Century of Smoke” (2019), a portrait of a Laotian family struggling with opium addiction, premiered at Visions du Réel and screened at international festivals such as São Paulo, Munich, and Cartagena. Since 2020, he has collaborated across borders and forms with Vietnamese filmmaker Trương Minh Quý. He is currently developing his first fiction feature."
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