There is a part of the boat tour of Am Trang in northern Vietnam’s Ninh Binh province where tourists disembark and find themselves amidst a fake straw-hut village with a rusted shell of a fake US military plane, remnants of the making of the film Kong Island back in 2016. It’s a novelty, to be sure, a quick stop for a few photos and then back on the boat, which could perhaps be a euphemism for international filmmaking in Vietnam on the whole.
Indeed, post-Kong Island, few international blockbusters have been filmed in Vietnam, a reality that the Ministry of Tourism, Sports, and Culture is hoping to change. Last week, the body in charge of both Vietnam’s tourism and film industries, announced that it would be pitching Vietnam’s benefits as a film set at events in both San Francisco and Hollywood at the end of this month.
The goal is to see a big movie or two filmed with Vietnam as a backdrop, the theory being that this will showcase Vietnam’s natural beauty and unique features and subsequently boost tourist numbers from the US–something akin to what Crocodile Dundee did for Australian tourism or The Beach did for Thailand.
But while this idea has merit, awareness does not look to be what is holding foreign filmmakers back from making films in Vietnam. Rather, lengthy approvals processes connected to a complex censorship regime are seeing filmmakers eschew Vietnam for more receptive locations closeby.
For example, for Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, which was set in Vietnam, only a handful of scenes were filmed in Ho Chi Minh City with the rest of the film shot in Thailand.
“Thailand has an established film infrastructure, so it was easy to [work] there,” the film’s Director of Photography, Newton Thomas Sigel, told Variety back in 2020.
Vietnam, however, was a different story with multiple approvals from various government departments creating uncertainty for the production..
“We were never 100 percent sure if we were going to get to shoot there,” he said.
Furthermore, the Netflix series The Sympathiser, a film about a French-Vietnamese double agent during the Vietnam War, reportedly couldn’t get approval to film in Vietnam at all. Of note, the filmmakers believed this to be related to the content of the work which wouldn’t be surprising.
Indeed, an updated Law on Cinema approved back in 2022, designed to grow Vietnam’s film industry, outlines an expansive list of restrictions on what stories can and cannot be produced in the country, that applies to both local and foreign filmmakers.
Among said restrictions is ‘distorting national history’, which is notably ambiguous, however, it is fairly safe to say, would see any script set in the Vietnam War likely to face some pretty severe scrutiny–the aforementioned The Sympathiser, for example.
The reality is, however, that Vietnam has featured in a multitude of Hollywood blockbusters on the back of the war–think Forrest Gump, Apocalypse Now, and Good Morning, Vietnam! (none of which were filmed in Vietnam)–-and in an age where authenticity and lived experience have become driving forces in modern filmmaking, allowing these stories to be told on Vietnamese soil could be a boon for the local film industry.
But censorship is not just holding foreign filmmakers back but local filmmakers too which looks to partially explain the relatively small size of Vietnam’s film industry and subsequently the lack of skilled human resources often cited by local media as a key challenge.
The locally made film Viet and Nam, for example, which is headed to the Cannes Film Festival, was banned from distribution by Vietnam’s Department of Cinema because of its ‘gloomy’ depiction of Vietnam, choking-off revenue from its home market.
Furthermore, in 2021, the makers of the film Vi–which took out the 71st Berlin International Film Festival Special Jury Prize–were fined VND 35 million or US$1,522 for failing to get permission from the Department of Cinema before distributing the film abroad.
To be clear, what could have been a feather in the cap of the local film industry instead effectively became a deterrent for local filmmakers.
What’s more, the stories that are being approved and made locally don’t look to be gaining traction with local audiences–eight out of 11 Vietnamese films released in the first half of this year failed to turn a profit.
The reality of all of this is that the local film industry remains small and the opportunities to develop local filmmaking human resources, as a result, remain limited.
All of that is to say, that it does not appear that it is a lack of awareness that is keeping foreign film makers away. Rather the challenges look to be more bureaucratic and systemic, challenges that, combing through local media reports, don’t seem to even be on the radar of the team headed to California.
It’s a shame too, because the timing looks very right. Diversity in storytelling in films, particularly stories from Asia, has become a prominent feature in the film industry in the last few years. South Korea, for example, is experiencing a renaissance in film with big blockbusters like Parasite and Squid Games elevating Asian film on the world stage. Indonesia and Thailand too are seeing sizable investments in local content from the likes of Netflix and receiving a fairly good response from audiences not just in Asia but around the world.
That is not to mention the growing imperative for Vietnam to diversify its economy away from manufacturing, with plenty of room to grow its creative industries–by one estimate, whereas creative industries make up about 5 to 10 percent of global GDP, in Vietnam that figure is only estimated to be about 3 percent.
That said, at the end of the day good cinema is about good storytelling and good storytelling generally takes creative freedom and a warts and all approach, both of which are currently restricted in Vietnam.
Vietnam, however, is an emerging market and a very dynamic one at that. The business environment can change quickly and with this in mind, foreign filmmakers considering making films in Vietnam should make sure to keep up to date with said changes by subscribing to the-shiv.