Director: Phạm Ngọc Lân
Runtime: 92 minutes
Country: Vietnam, Singapore, France, Philippines, Norway
Language: Vietnamese with English subtitles
Rating: NC16

Awards

FIPRESCI AWARD
Festival du Nouveau Cinéma 2024

BEST PICTURE PRIZE (INTERNATIONAL)
Jeonju International Film Festival 2024

GWFF BEST FIRST FEATURE AWARD
Berlin International Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

Cu Li Never Cries is Phạm Ngọc Lân’s spellbinding feature debut, a meditative exploration of Vietnamese history through the stories of two women who grapple with existential questions of loss and love. Lân’s carefully crafted black-and-white cinematography glides between immersive realism and fairy-tale shimmer, casting its characters in a nostalgic, otherworldly light.

Mrs Nguyện mourns a relationship that never was, as she is left with the ashes of her long-estranged husband and his pet pygmy slow loris. Meanwhile, her niece prepares for marriage even as the young couple ponders their uncertain future together.

Lân explores the contours of memory and grief through his dreamlike, almost surreal settings, creating a film that is driven by tone and atmosphere. The temporally distinctive, yet parallel stories of the women render the present and the complex echoes of Vietnamese history with a contemplative and poetic perspective, while the wide-eyed slow loris is both symbolic device and unflinching spectator to the relentless passage of time.

Adapted from Square Eyes Film.

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