LGBT-themed movie a Netflix Vietnam favorite

Data thus far has shown that Vietnamese overwhelmingly favor South Korean TV dramas over other content on Netflix Vietnam, accounting for six of the top 10 most watched shows Friday. Topping the list was Money Heist, a Spanish television crime drama series on a bank robbery. 

It is not often that a Vietnamese film breaks into the list of most popular shows among Vietnamese audiences since Netflix, worldwide streamer of movies and TV shows, began releasing its daily list since late February.

Goodbye Mother, screened on Netflix since April 1 last year, depicts the drama of Van and his boyfriend Ian, who’ve just returned to Vietnam from the U.S. The couple are initially unable to come out about their relationship because of the taboo involved, especially in rural Vietnam. This leads to friction between them, and Van is forced to explain the nature of their relationship to his mother.

The movie is the directorial debut of Trinh Dinh Le Minh, who studied directing at the University of Texas in the U.S. He had done a few short films before embarking on his first full length feature film.

Netflix has been available in Vietnam since 2016 at VND180,000 ($7.8) a month for a basic subscription. It now boasts a total 31 Vietnamese films covering romantic, comedy, action to horror and adventure genres.

The service, with around 167 million subscribers in over 190 countries and territories by Q4 2019, has been seeking to produce and acquire rights for more Asian content to increase its number of global subscribers. It launched its Vietnamese language website last October.