Officials from Vietnam’s Department of Cinema have announced they want to draft a plan to make the local film industry the “leading one in Southeast Asia by 2020”. At a recent conference in Hanoi, the plan has been introduced to screenwriters, producers, directors and other experts.

Filmmakers said Vietnam needs to adopt a new digital technology that allows films to be broadcast through satellites, sold online, and even enables new creative approaches. The state also would need to set up a film foundation to support high-quality film projects, especially genre and experimental films. Vietnam’s Department of Cinema is also, for the first time, strongly wanting to “re-define” local cinema as a potentially lucrative and profitable industry instead of art or propaganda.

However, the current situation is that the Vietnamese film industry has no works for screening at international events, and the local market is dominated by foreign films, and local films are not exported overseas, which needs to be changed, according to the filmmakers.

There is also a need for setting up a new mechanism for investments in the film industry, regardless if the investors are private companies or individuals or the state.

The film industry in Vietnam started in the 1920s, and has largely been shaped by wars that have been fought in the country from the 1940s to the 1970s. After the reunification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam, studios in the former South Vietnam turned to making Socialist Realism films.

Later on, better known Vietnamese language films came up, including Cyclo, The Scent of Green Papaya and Vertical Ray of the Sun, all by French-trained director Tran Anh Hung. European productions in Vietnam include acclaimed productions such as The Lover and Indochine.

In recent years, as Vietnam’s film industry has modernised and moved beyond government-backed propaganda films, contemporary Vietnamese filmmakers have gained a wider audience with films such as Buffalo Boy, Bar Girls, The White Silk Dress, The Rebel, Clash and Muoi, the first Vietnamese horror movie and the first rated film in Vietnam.

Below the trailer of Muoi:

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