Minh Quý Truong’s intriguing ethno-fictional movie essay takes the point of view of a future space traveller on a fascinating Vietnamese ethnic group
Here is a strange, opaque but interesting piece from Vietnamese film-maker Minh Quý Truong: an ethno-fictional essay movie. The premise is that a space traveller of the future (in 2045) is on
Mars and in contact with his father about what life was like in Vietnam 25 years ago – or rather now. We do not see any of the footage that he is supposedly filming on Mars (and finally and disconcertingly hear that it is to be abandoned, because cinema is a “joy of the past”). But we do see grainy 16mm film of various remote rural communities on Earth, in Vietnam, where the past, or rather the present, is a different country, or rather a different planet.