A scene in Vietnamese film ‘The Last Wife’

The Vietnamese film industry is therefore celebrating its recent successes, including international accolades and local box-office record-breakers, the article wrote.

Ha Le Diem’s coming-of-age documentary Children Of The Mist made history as the first Vietnamese documentary feature to be shortlisted for an Oscar earlier this year.

Pham Thien An won the coveted Camera d’Or at Cannes Film Festival with Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, exactly 30 years after Vietnam-born French director Tran Anh Hung scooped the same prize with The Scent Of Green Papaya.

The first six months of the year witnessed a sharp increase in the local box office, clocking up 23 million admissions, comparable to the all-time high of 48 million recorded back in 2019 before COVID-19.

Screen Daily also assessed that Vietnam has built strong links with the United States. Many top directors such as Kiet, Victor Vu, Timothy Linh Bui, Charlie Nguyen (The Rebel), and Ham Tran (Maika) were either born or raised there, thereby bringing a different aesthetic to local cinema.

The US, which has the largest overseas diaspora globally, is therefore a key international market for Vietnamese films.