In response to the first issue, cinema bureau director Thanh and some directors have said that censorship rules, which take only 15 days for reviewing a film, are not holding back filmmakers. The 2019 New Currents award winner at the Busan International Film Festival, Tran Thanh Huy’s ‘Rom’, a coming-of-age story about gambling addiction among working-class people, had to be edited to tone down its violence before it earned an 18+ classification for local screening.Īs happened to ‘Vi’, its producer too was fined for attending the Busan festival before receiving a combined classification and screening certificate from the censors.Īt the heart of the controversy are some basic questions: Whether filmmakers can be freed from censorship, which many say hampers the creative process, especially international collaboration which could involve complicated shooting in many countries and not just in Vietnam whether the government can legitimately ban any work rather than simple classifying and whether the local classification system can be extended to include bolder works. In recent years, several movies have sparked debates about whether Vietnamese censors are being too conservative and holding back contrary artistic expression.įor instance, Charlie Nguyen’s 2013 movie ‘Bui Doi Cho Lon’ (Chinatown) about gangsters was banned because the censors considered its portrayal of violence 'unrealistic' as a scene featured hundreds of gangsters fighting in the street without any passers-by or the police. This is not the first time that such an unflattering cinematic representation has clashed head-on with censors’ sensibilities. This movie has been banned from cinemas because it features around 30 minutes of nudity.Īccording to Vi Kien Thanh, director of the Bureau of Cinematography, the law does not specify how much nudity can be shown and gives censors room to interpret whether nude scenes are necessary to a movie or simply gratuitous.īao’s movie is about a struggling Nigerian footballer who migrates to Vietnam to work, has his contract terminated, and is forced by circumstances to co-habit with four middle-aged Vietnamese women in a poor neighborhood.

The latest case is director Le Bao’s ‘Vi’ (Taste), which won the Special Jury Award in the Encounters Section at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival in March.

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