During a peculiar tour bus to Mekong Delta, 50-year-old Mdm.Tam bumps into her high school sweetheart. She's hopeful for a chance of reconciliation, but maybe he's not.
Original Title Thiên đường gọi tên Year of production 2020 Length 15min Country Vietnam Shooting Format HD Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Dialogue Vietnamese DirectorLinh Duong Producer Nguyễn Mai Ka Production Widewall Studio Writer Linh Duong Cinematographer Ngô Minh Nghĩa Editor Diệu Linh Sound Designer Teo Wei Yong CastVũ Thị Chung Phạm Thị Oanh Lê Mạnh Bảo
Director's Statement My obsession with death and the afterlife journey started when I realized how my mother had become so old and fragile. After hearing her regrets, sufferings and unfulfilled wishes in life, I developed this crazy wish where she can get all the happiness she wanted in life whilst her soul is on its journey to heaven. As I was researching for this film, Mekong River became an important element in this story. Most known as a popular touristic destination in Vietnam, the documentation of the river is my way or memorizing Vietnam and its peculiar mass tourism. I have been to the river at least 4-5 times over the past 10 years, and the tour itself - as we saw in the film - has not changed at all. There was such uncanny resemblances between the tour’s destinations to Vietnamese beliefs of a soul’s journey after death that intertwined together. Along a muddy river where the souls sail through, around a temple fire where souls are cleansed of their life’s memories, ending it all with a stairway guiding souls towards, perhaps, eternity.
