Two directors whose films have won awards at international film festivals, Phan Dang Di and Nguyen Hoang Diep, share about the opportunity for Vietnamese films to compete officially at Cannes.

In your opinion, how far is the chance for Vietnamese films to enter the Cannes Film Festival in the official competition category? What does Vietnamese cinema lack, what does it need to have that chance?

Nguyen Hoang Diep: I don't understand why it has to be Cannes? And if it's Cannes, why does it have to be an official category? Are we somehow putting pressure or putting films (in my opinion, pure artistic creations) on a scale of comparison?

Of course, everyone wants to make a film public. There are films that target the public at film festivals, so obviously they will compete, but the competition and the expectation for the results of the competition should be a little different, right?

This is a film, this is a work of art, please don't ask questions as if it's a shame that Vietnam doesn't have any films officially competing at the Cannes Film Festival... and then when a Vietnamese film wins a major award at an international film festival, some people will doubt it first, is that film festival big? That that category seems to be unofficial? That that award is not a major award?

Cinematographer Pham Quang Minh, director Phan Dang Di and Nguyen Hoang Diep at the Cannes Film Festival. -Photo: NVCC

If we look at it from Vietnam's perspective, then to have a film competing in Cannes, we lack good films. And our weakness is that we are not really determined to make good films!

If the perspective is not representative of the country: Talent is needed, and talent is... probably more personal than ours. So I think the opportunity comes every year in May. It's just that I have enough talent and am different enough that I don't need to wear a baby dress and hold a chicken to go on the red carpet... without anyone complaining that I'm showing off my dress at Cannes!

Although to be honest, I have no objection to this, I even think that if I had the money, I would just take it to Cannes and burn it, then take a picture and publish it in the newspaper, that would be good too. Eagerness to come to the temple of cinema is not the right of the bad filmmaking community alone - the poor have nothing but movies.

Phan Dang Di: This can be near or far, and the prerequisite is that we need to have truly talented individuals. Cannes is the most important gathering place for the elite filmmakers, for the values ​​that have become classic in cinema, and is also a place that welcomes films that expose the issues of the times with sometimes harsh, shocking perspectives or films that break the mold in form as an effort to renew the language of cinema.

Because of that characteristic, Cannes needs extremely famous and familiar faces to maintain its top position and "classic" outfit, but it also needs aggressive filmmakers, truly unique and different new talents to prove that cinema is not frozen in familiar faces.

Of course, we don't have any familiar faces at Cannes, but even finding a filmmaker new enough, "aggressive" enough, and different enough as Cannes needs is not easy at all, especially after a very long time when we have isolated ourselves from the top film industry, confining ourselves to overly safe, overly outdated standards of creative thinking while the world has progressed very far.

In addition, the rare young talents that have just emerged have to grope for a long time in an environment with very little support from management agencies, only aiming for safety, forgetting the fact that the least safe thing for a film industry (or more broadly, an entire culture) is that it has no voice in important areas of the world./.