Director Pham Ngoc Lan hoped the film would impressively win the hearts of the audience at home, and Vietnamese movie lovers would not think that award-winning films are hard-to-watch pictures.
The movie tells the story of a woman who returns to Vietnam from Germany with the ashes of her estranged husband. The legacy her husband has left her is an urn with his ashes and Cu Li, his pet pygmy slow Loris (a primate found primarily in Southeast Asia). Upon returning to Vietnam she finds that her pregnant niece is rushing into marriage, and fears that she will make the same life mistakes as she did. She begins a journey retracing her memories, evoking Vietnam’s storied past. The film also tells about her efforts to maintain a connection to the past while facing the complexities of modern life.
The movie participated in 18 film festivals and won five awards. It received the Best International Film award at the 2024 Jeonju International Film Festival and the Asian Film Award at the Da Nang Asian Film Festival (DANAFF) 2024. By the end of the year, it is scheduled to compete in more than 10 prestigious film events, including the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes, France, and the Singapore International Film Festival.
Pham Ngoc Lan graduated from Hanoi Architectural University in 2009. His movie, "Cu Li Never Cries" was chosen for the L'Atelier Cinefondation at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival while the film, “Another City” won the special mention prize for short fiction at the International Shorts Competition, Indie Lisboa International Film Festival 2016, Lisbon, Portugal and Uppsala Award ‘In Memory of Ingmar Bergman’ at the International Shorts Competition, Uppsala International Short Film Festival 2016 in Sweden.
