Blessed Land
Runtime : 18.32mins
Country : Vietnam
Dir. : Phạm Ngọc Lân
Schedule : Sun 23, June 2019 (13.00)
Genre : Fiction
World Premiere : Berlinale International Film Festival 2019
Synopsis
A middle-aged woman and her son visit her late husband’s grave - situated in a former fishing village she hasn’t been to in decades. In the cemetery on the sandy dunes, they wander around for a long time without finding the headstone. Has her memory eroded, or has the grave been concealed somewhere underneath the green grass of the new golf courses? It’s true, for the nouveau riche, land for the living to play on is better than land for the dead to rest.
Director’s Biography
Phạm Ngọc Lân is a Vietnamese film director with a background in urban planning and architecture. Since 2011, Lan’s debut short film THE STORY OF ONES (2011) has been screened in numerous film festivals and art museums, include Visions du Reel (Switzerland), CPH-DOX (Denmark), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan), etc. In 2012, he was invited to a Creators Residency in Hokkaido, Japan, where he organized his first exhibition. In 2015, Lan’s first short fiction project ANOTHER CITY participated in the Short Film Station in Berlinale Talents. One year later, the final production premiered at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival (Germany) under Berlinale Shorts Competition. Currently, Lan is developing his first feature film CU LI NEVER CRIES. The project is selected to L’Atelier 2017 - festival de Cannes, Busan Project Market 2016 and SEAFIC script lab.