Metrograph

“Đặng’s 1984 masterpiece broke new ground as the first Vietnamese film to screen in the US, and as an early challenger to official war memories. The moving portrait of grief centers on Duyên (Lê Vân), whose husband dies in Vietnam’s post-reunification war with Cambodia. Concealing his death from loved ones, she enlists a schoolteacher to forge letters from him, maintaining the deception at the cost of her own profound anguish. Through impressionistic countryside landscapes and seamless transitions between realms of the living and dead, Đặng built from socialist realist foundations a distinctly lyrical cinematic style.” —Minh Nguyen