Director Tran Anh Hung: From the smell of green papaya, to Vietnamese making history at Cannes

Tran Anh Hung – a French-Vietnamese director – is not only famous in Vietnam, he also resonates in the international film industry. He currently lives in France but often returns to his home country to teach cinema to young filmmakers.

Tran Anh Hung's films such as The smell of green papaya, Cyclo, Vertical summer are unique and bold Vietnamese materials. Particularly, the work "The smell of green papaya" has won many prestigious film awards such as Cannes 1993, César and is a rare representative of Vietnamese cinema to be shortlisted for Oscar nominations - in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.

Following his family to settle in France, Tran Anh Hung grew up with his parents' flashbacks to his homeland. The director once said that although relatives only told a few stories over and over again, he never got bored. As an adult, he spent a lot of time reading about Vietnam, learning about his home culture through the pages of books.

Later, entering the filmmaking career, the director began to pursue Vietnamese topics. In 1987, preparing for his graduation from the prestigious film school, École Louis-Lumière, he chose the short film genre with La Femme Mariée de Nam Xuong, a script inspired by the Legend of the Manchu.

The first mark of Tran Anh Hung's profession was the smell of green papaya. Premiered at Cannes; the story tells the love story between the character Sheep - the girl who went to stay since childhood and the pianist Khuyen. The film conquered critics and fans alike with its poetic frames.

Right from his first work, the director made his mark with a romantic filmmaking style. Throughout the work, Tran Anh Hung mainly uses a slow tempo, depicting the portrait of Sheep as a child to adolescence 10 years later.

In dramatic situations, the director does not push into a climax but still chooses a gentle handling rhythm. In terms of realism, the film evokes many thoughts about the condition of Vietnamese women - from characters with patient, self-sacrificing personalities like Mui, the landlady and even the mother-in-law.

The work also scores points for its aesthetic filmmaking, directing viewers to feel about nature. The director depicts the beauty of life around her in simple things, such as how little Sheep rolls her eyes to watch drops of milky white papaya sap drip onto green foliage, or delight in watching seeds and ant colonies.

French animation director Benoît Philippon once stated that when watching Tran Anh Hung's film, the pure beauty in the work captivated him, motivating this filmmaker to travel to Vietnam.

After The smell of green papaya, Tran Anh Hung continued to resonate with his work Cyclo (Cyclo) - with the participation of Hong Kong star Leung Trieu Wei. This film explores the nakedness of the life of the working poor – pushed into the post-reform underworld.

However, it can be seen that Tran Anh Hung's works do not always receive positive feedback. When Vertical Summer came out, many domestic critics said that the film focused on beautiful images without caring about the content.

In 2010, with the work Norwegian Forest - Tran Anh Hung received a nomination for Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, but caused mixed reactions from viewers. Many commented that the director's slow, unorderly cutting and pacing made the film difficult to understand, especially for those who have not read the story.

For 30 years of filmmaking, Tran Anh Hung has always held the view of creating art to satisfy his ego. " My reality is a complex blend, through the lens of many artists I know, I choose to come into contact with. It's the smell, it's the color, it's the substance that I see in Vietnam," the director once said.

Although loyal to the aesthetic filmmaking style, but for Tran Anh Hung: in cinematic language, elaborate images need to match emotions, stories and characters. The Pot Au Feu - proves his point when expressing culinary beauty mixed with the beauty of love.

Sharing with the media, director Tran Anh Hung once said: " If you want to enjoy art, you must learn and feel to be able to come to it. Feelings or emotions can come if we have good instincts, but we need to nurture that instinct to be able to feel the artwork." Besides, he also emphasized that the power of a work of art has the ability to change people's gaze.

When working with actors, Tran Anh Hung has no rules at all. He said the most important thing was the ability to enjoy what was happening. No actor is the same, so I can't have any standards when working with them. We need to understand them, love them, love them in some way to lead them to what we want.

For him, the language of cinema has no nationality. Director Tran Anh Hung thinks that when making films with cinematic language, everyone in the world can feel it.

For many years, Tran Anh Hung and Tran Nu Yen Khe have cherished passing on the love of cinema to young filmmakers in Vietnam. They returned home to teach courses within the framework of the Autumn Encounter program, an annual international film event.

Director Huynh Cong Remember - winner of the jury prize of Singapore Film Festival 2022 - was once discovered by Tran Anh Hung for film talent. "He often conveys cinematic knowledge with the sincere, intimate and passionate tone of a filmmaker. Studying and collaborating with him, we have the opportunity to enter a place where we can discover our own cinematic language," Cong Nho said.