Vietnamese entry to vie for award at Busan film festival

The film has multiple stories set in various locations and periods of time that are closely connected by death.

One is about a poor boy carefully budgeting the expenses for his mother’s funeral. Another is about a woman who decides to bury her husband, who was killed in an accident at a construction site, in his hometown to comfort his soul.

The festival website says: "In the end, attitudes toward death are determined by how the living receive it. No one can be forced to miss someone and to live with a debt of memory.

"Ultimately, Memoryland by Bui Kim Quy settles on revealing the truth that no one can escape it."

The movie will come up against 10 others from countries like Iran, China and India for the New Currents Award.

Two winning directors will get a cash award of $30,000.

According to the festival organizers, the awards are given to the first or second work of an Asian director.

Quy is a writer and director who studied screenwriting at the Hanoi Academy of Theater and Cinema, and works as a lecturer. She writes scripts for films as well as television.

Her first feature film, 'Nguoi Truyen Giong' (The Inseminator), was shown in the Window On Asian Cinema section in Busan in 2014 and won the Best Film Photography Award at the 2015 ASEAN International Film Festival.

Memoryland, her second movie, was supported by the ASEAN Cinema Fund Busan’s Script Development Fund in 2016.

The 26th Busan International Film Festival will be held from October 6 to 15.