HCMC, January 16th, 2021 – The Consulate General of Italy in Ho Chi Minh City has proudly supported the 48 Hour Film Project in Vietnam: an initiative co-organized by Capital Studio, CoLab-Vietnam and HKFilm, and conceived to nurture the creativity and passion of the youngest generations of Vietnamese film-makers.
With more than 1,000 participants representing 126 teams, the 48 Hour Film Project Vietnam has been a huge success in terms of participation and quality of the creative propositions.
The event has been concluded with the awards night celebration, held in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday 16 January, at the presence of the Consul General, Dante Brandi.
The awards night ceremony included a tribute concert to Ennio Morricone, with a program comprising his most famous movie scores, performed by a semi-classical selection of the Saigon Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and arranged and rehearsed in remote by the Italian Director Roberto Fiore.
In his opening remarks, Consul General Dante Brandi indicated how, against all odds, 2020 has been a very fruitful year for the cooperation between Italy and Vietnam in cinema.
Italy set in fact as international stage for Vietnamese movie productions (“The Third Wife” by Ash Mayfair winner at the Asian Film Festival in Rome in August; “Live In Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Nghia Vu Minh and Thy Pham Hoang Minh selected to compete at the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival), while Vietnam received with appreciation Italian productions and retrospectives (“Pinocchio” by Matteo Garrone distributed in the whole network of CJ-CGV movie theatres; the Italian Film Festival organized by the Embassy of Italy in Hanoi and the Consulate General of Italy in HCMC to offer a glimpse on Italian contemporary cinema and pay tribute to Federico Fellini, in the recurrence of his birth’s 100th anniversary), up to the point of having a recent Italian successful movie, “Perfect Strangers” (2016) by Paolo Genovese, re-made in Vietnam in a production of year 2020: “Blood Moon Party”, which was particularly successful in Vietnamese movie theatres.
During the event, Consul General Dante Brandi announced and handed over the prize for best movie, awarded to “Hat De Film – Lu Dong”, an intense family story in urban contemporary Vietnam, by a jury composed of director, screenwriter and producer Phan Gia Nhật Linh; director, actor, producer, and screenwriter Kathy Uyên; director and screenwriter Hàm Trần; producer, deputy director and actress Jenni Trang Lê; and producer Irene Trịnh.
