Tran Anh Hung

Tran Anh Hung
Born	Trần Anh Hùng December 23, 1962 Đà Nẵng, Central Vietnam
Occupation	Film Director, Screenwriter
Years active	1989 – present
Spouse(s)	Trần Nữ Yên Khê 2 children

Trần Anh Hùng (born December 23, 1962) is a Vietnamese-born French film director.

Early life

Trần was born in Đà Nẵng, Central Vietnam, and emigrated to France when he was 12 following the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Film career

Trần has been at the forefront of a wave of acclaimed overseas Vietnamese cinema over the past two decades. His films have received international fame and acclaim, and his first three features were varied meditations on life in his home country Vietnam.

Trần's Oscar-nominated debut (for Best foreign film) was The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), which also won two top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. His follow-up Cyclo (1995, which featured top Hong Kong movie star Tony Leung Chiu Wai, also won a top prize at the Venice International Film Festival. The Vertical Ray of the Sun, released in 2000, was the third film in his "Vietnam trilogy."

After a sabbatical Trần returned with the noir psychological thriller I Come with the Rain (2009), which featured a star-studded international cast including Josh Hartnett and Elias Koteas.

It was announced in July 2008 that Trần would direct an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's novel Norwegian Wood. The film was released in Japan in December 2010.^[1]

Films on Vietnam

In France, Trần studied at the prestigious film school Louis Lumière College. For his graduation project in 1987 he wrote and directed a short film Người thiếu phụ Nam Xương, inspired by an old Vietnamese folk tale (Truyền kỳ mạn lục).

Following this Trần made another short film, Hòn vọng phu (1989), before launching the feature film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993). The Scent of Green Papaya was acclaimed for its style and its beautiful images of Vietnamese life. To date, the film is the only representative of Vietnamese cinema to be nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The success of Papaya helped Trần gain funding for the next film, Cyclo. The film tells stories of poor people living in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), and was filmed on location there. Cyclo won the Golden Lion at 52nd Venice International Film Festival, and at the age of 33, Trần was one of the youngest filmmakers to be thus honored there.

Having depicted life in Ho Chi Minh City, Trần turned his attention to Hanoi in The Vertical Ray of the Sun(2000). The main characters of the film are three sisters who idolize their parents' family life, before the truth is revealed after the mother's death.

All three feature films were financed by Christophe Rossignon (Lazenecs film company).

Influences and style of film-making

Trần's films are made so as to rebuild the image of Vietnam that he has lost when immigrating into France and to provide audience with another point of view on Vietnam while this topic has been long dominated by French and American cinema. The stories are based on Trần's knowledge about Vietnamese language and culture and (in the second and third films) his first-hand experience gained from trips to the country.^[2]

Trần is strongly influenced by French cinema and from some European and Japanese filmmakers, namely Bergman, Bresson, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Ozu.

Trần's style of filmmaking is expressed through the claim: "Art is the truth wearing mask" (interview originally in Vietnamese).^[3] He denies the conventional story-telling style and pursues making films with a new language: "to challenges the audience's feeling, making them enjoy the films not with the critical reasoning but the body language".^[3]

Filmography

Feature Film
Year	English Title	Original Title	Notes
1993	The Scent of Green Papaya	Mùi đu đủ xanh	Won — Caméra d'Or – 1993 Cannes Film Festival Won – Award of the Youth for Best French Film – 1993 Cannes Film Festival Won – Sutherland Trophy – 1994 British Film Institute Won – César Award for Best Debut – 1994 César Award Nominated – Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
1995	Cyclo	Xích lô	Won – Golden Lion – 1995 Venice Film Festival Won – FIPRESCI Prize – 1995 Venice Film Festival Won – Grand Prix – 1995 Flanders International Film Festival Ghent
2000	The Vertical Ray of the Sun	Mùa hè chiếu thẳng đứng	Nominated – Prix Un Certain Regard – 2000 Cannes Film Festival Contemporary World Cinema – 2000 Toronto International Film Festival A Window on Asian Cinema – 5th Pusan International Film Festival [4]
2009	I Come with the Rain	I Come with the Rain	Contemporary World Cinema – 6th Fresh Film Fest Nominated – The Siren (Best International Fantastic Film) [5] – 2009 Lund International Fantastic Film Festival [6] Gala Presentation – 14th Pusan International Film Festival [7]
2010	Norwegian Wood	ノルウェイの森	In Competition – 67th Venice International Film Festival
2016	Eternity	Eternité
Short Film
Year	English Title	Original Title	Notes
1989	La femme mariée de Nam Xuong	Người thiếu phụ Nam Xương	Nominated – Short Film Palme d'Or – 1989 Cannes Film Festival
1991	La pierre de l'attente	La pierre de l'attente

References

1. Jason Gray (2008). Trần to adapt Norwegian Wood for Asmik Ace, Fuji TV, Screen Daily.com article retrieved August 1, 2008.
2. Tran Anh Hung as diasporic filmmaker, Tarr, Carrie (2005). In: Robson, Kathryn and Yee, Jennifer, (eds.) France and "Indochina": cultural representations. Marlyland, U.S. : Lexington Books. pp. 153-164. ISBN 0739108409
3. Nghệ thuật là sự thật được đeo mặt nạ - Art is the truth wearing mask, Lâm Phố (2004)
4. Official Selection List – A Window on Asian Cinema, PIFF Archive 5th (2000)
5. What happens at Lund International Fantastic Film Festival 2010?, Fantastisk Film Festival Lund 23 September – 2 October 2010
6. International Competition 2009 , Fantastisk Film Festival Lund 23 September – 2 October 2010
7. Official Selection List Gala Presentation, PIFF Archive 14th (2009)

External links

• Trần Anh Hùng at the Internet Movie Database
• Dan Bloom, "Norwei no mori" goes to Hollywood RushPRnews