The Director of the Cinema Department made a statement to attract attention to Dat Phuong Nam's competition for the Golden Lotus Award

Recently, "Southern Forest Land" has been continuously entangled in many fierce controversies. However, ignoring the noise, the film is still one of the "candidates" competing for the Golden Lotus Award at the 2023 Vietnam Film Festival.

This morning, October 30, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the first press conference about the XXIII Vietnam Film Festival took place with the slogan: "Building a Vietnamese film industry rich in national identity, modern and Humanities". Here, the list of films selected to officially compete in the categories "Feature Film", "Documentary - Science", "Animated Film" was announced.

The category of interest at the moment must be "Feature Films" including: Southern Forest Land, The Last Wife, The Red River Girl, Brilliant Ashes, Mrs. Nu's House, The Girl From the Past; 9; The Shy Child Finds a Husband; Peaches, Pho and Piano; You and Trinh; FANTI; Jasmine; Anonymous; 578; Mom, Here Is a Butterfly; Ten: The Curse Returns.

At the event, representatives of the Cinema Department answered press questions, including that the work "Southern Forest Land" is facing many mixed opinions, controversy over historical inaccuracies and must be interrogated. Determine and correct some details that affect the film's competition.

Accordingly, Director of the Cinema Department - Vi Kien Thanh said: "The Councils and Jury will decide the award, and the opinion of public opinion as well as the audience will be considered in the award of the voting audience." Choose your favorite film. Titles and results at the festival are based solely on the judges' evaluations."

However, up to now, the judges are still kept secret even though the competing films and titles have been announced. Speaking about this issue, Mr. Ta Quang Dong - Deputy Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism said that the Organizing Committee will follow the usual practice of keeping the jury composition secret until close to the festival and currently they are focusing on watching films to judge the awards.

Regarding the list of famous artists who will participate in the upcoming festival, Deputy Minister Ta Quang Dong said that he is still waiting for the film crew to confirm and announce it at the press conference on November 10 in Da Lat. However, he believes that with the list of participating films this year, it is possible that the festival will welcome many famous names to participate.

It is known that from 31 feature films, 82 documentaries, 23 science films, and 43 animated films registered to attend the festival, the Organizing Committee will set up a Council to select films into 2 Programs: Project Film Program competition and Panorama film program.

Of these, 91 films were selected for the Contest Film Program including: 16 feature films, 31 documentaries, 19 science films, 25 animated films; 56 films were selected for the Panorama Film Program, including: 14 feature films, 20 documentaries, 4 science films, 18 animated films.

Vietnam Film Festival 2023 will take place for the first time from November 21-25, 2023 in Da Lat city, Lam Dong province.

Returning to "Southern Forest Land", despite receiving attention from a large public, the film had unimpressive sales after more than 2 weeks of release. According to data from Box Office Vietnam, the number of tickets sold for the work shows signs of a sharp decline even though the number of daily screenings is still very high (about more than 4,000). As of noon on October 26, the film earned 108 billion VND after nearly 2 weeks of release, reaching a milestone that helped the producer break even but is considered low compared to previous expectations.

The unfortunate thing for the "Southern Forest Land" crew is that the film has been entangled in a series of controversies over the past time. In the movie version, director Nguyen Quang Dung made many modifications compared to the original. As soon as the project revealed the first scenes, many comments said that the film's setting was strange and did not evoke the old West.

Not stopping there, many people also compared the movie to the 1997 TV version that was very successful. Some criticized new characters such as Uncle Ba Phi (played by Tran Thanh) and Vo Tong (played by Mai Tai Phien). They believe that the new actors' appearance does not match the prototype.

These noises have significantly affected the performance of "Southern Forest Land" at the box office. The proof is that when it had an expected opening with more than 43 billion after three days, the movie quickly cooled down in the theater system even though it still accounted for the majority of screenings on the day. After reaching the sales milestone of 100 billion VND on October 23, the following days, the film's revenue only reached about 3 billion VND per day, down 5 times compared to the first premiere days.

Trấn Thành nhận cái kết ê chề, đầu tư 2 phim nhưng đều trắng tay tại LHP VN, trưởng BGK nói rõ lý do Bảo Nam13:23:22 27/11/2023Phim Đất rừng phương Nam của đạo diễn Nguyễn Quang Dũng khởi chiếu ngày 13/10 đến ngày 25/11, đạt doanh thu gần 140 tỷ đồng (theo Box Office Vietnam) song vẫn trắng tay ở LHP Việt Nam.