Czech director and artist with Vietnamese roots, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, has had successful years behind her. For her graduation film Dear Dad, she received two Czech Lion statuettes and other foreign awards. In mid-February, her prestigious artistic residency in Paris, where she worked on the subject of her debut feature, also ends. The author of the interview knows the director, and that’s why they talk to each other.
When we last interviewed each other, in the spring of 2020, you were finishing preparations for the filming of your graduation film Dear Dad. I remember you weren’t sure how things would turn out with him. But in the end it became a hit. How do you perceive the changes that have taken place in your life over the last four years?
It’s great that you ask this question with distance. My life has really changed and I believe in myself much more now than I did four years ago. I did not expect such a success and I am very grateful for it. I believe that what I do has meaning, I am motivated. But attention and success are always temporary, one cannot count on them for the future, one cannot do one’s work just to get an award. And so I don’t expect my upcoming feature film to do as well as Dear Dad. I am doing my best to make the film good, but I don’t expect it to be as successful.
What will your debut feature film be about?
It will be a feature film with a combination of collage animation, similar to Dear Dad. And it is a fiction about the life of a young Vietnamese woman living in the Czech Republic who receives a marriage proposal from Vietnam. They offer her 30,000 euros to marry a young Vietnamese man. The film is about a dilemma – guilt towards community, family and individuality. I didn’t want to deal with the Vietnamese theme again, my original idea was a story about a pregnant teenager. But I got stuck and in the end the subject didn’t seem so good to me. That’s why I finally worked out the marriage proposal. I once received a similar offer.
Didn’t you say it wasn’t an autobiography?
You’re right, but the subject is just inspired by my experience. I wanted to avoid Vietnamese themes because I don’t want to be labeled as a Vietnamese filmmaker. But it is ultimately the most natural path for a debut. I am dealing with an experience that I know and write about well. Vietnamese culture will always be a part of my personality, so I thought there was no point in avoiding it.
In some Czech media, the portrayal of the Vietnamese community is still stereotypical. And in the Czech media space, the same themes keep repeating themselves – parents are traditional, strict and the like. But my film goes deeper and brings a view of topics that the majority of Czech society has no idea about. Even in the case of the movie Dear Dad, many people told me that they had no idea how much the importance of sons as the continuation of the family is ingrained in Vietnamese culture.
Why did you yourself reject the Vietnamese marriage proposal?
A typical Vietnamese citizen cannot just pack up and go to Europe. It works, but it costs a lot of money and everything takes a long time. In addition, someone has to guarantee it in the Czech Republic. Marriage is simply a means of getting to Europe. I was 22 when my parents’ acquaintances offered me 500,000 crowns to marry their son, which would allow him to get to the Czech Republic.
For me it was more of a joke, I didn’t even think about it for a moment. I let it go then. The boy later got into trouble in Vietnam and I felt a little guilty if I shouldn’t have helped him then. But my character in the film has it much more complicated and has several reasons why she should accept the offer.
In the film Dear Dad, however, you reflect on a much more personal topic – the relationship with your father, who eventually left your mother because he longed for a son. This is also why your mother and sister eventually moved back to Vietnam. And your relationship with your father has been strained for years. Did the movie improve your relationship with your dad?
At the moment when I started shooting the film, I had already solved my problems with my father. I perceived the subject with great distance, I did not feel any emotions towards it. When I was writing and solving the story, it was very emotional, but not anymore during the filming. I knew I had to be as honest as possible. If I wasn’t, the movie wouldn’t be good. It took a long time to put it together, so a visceral and for me emotional personal story simply became a subject.
When I finished the film, I internally resolved our split. I also did Dear Dad to better understand our entire relationship. I was nervous about what my dad would say about the result. I wondered if he would be upset that I was revealing such a personal, family matter in public. He wasn’t there, but he didn’t comment on the film, rather he asked practical and technical questions. He is very proud of me and, paradoxically, brags a lot about the film.
What were the responses of the Czech-Vietnamese audience?
After the launch, many Czech Vietnamese women wrote to me that they had experienced something similar, that even their father wanted a son more than a daughter. This only confirmed to me that this is a real problem in the Vietnamese community, but not only in it. It is a problem understandable to a wide range of people and nations. And for some reason, this tradition of picking up the sons continues.
I experienced one of the strongest screenings of Dear Dad in Vietnam, where mainly young girls came to see the film. They told me that it gave them courage and that it was great to talk about these things out loud. It touched me. My family also attended the screening and the male members of the older generation said nothing at all. Which I expected. The older generation of women in the family rather felt sorry for me for going through this. But I don’t think they fully reflected the meaning of the film.
However, in my opinion, young Vietnamese in the Czech Republic do not deal with the traditional division of male and female roles at all. Young Vietnamese guys in the Czech Republic have it quite difficult, because they are expected to be the breadwinners of the family, which not everyone wants. And they are also expected to have a kind of dominance in relationships, which not everyone has.
In our earlier interview, you admitted that you didn’t have any pop culture role models to identify with as a child. Now you’ve won the Czech Lion and you’ve also made it to Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 selection. Do you see yourself as a role model for young Vietnamese Czechs?
I don’t think I’m a role model, but I’d love to be someone’s inspiration. In my opinion, the lack of pop culture role models for the Czech-Vietnamese community still persists, it would probably be very presumptuous to hope that a fairy tale will be created for it in the Czech Republic. In my opinion, Czech Television is still conservative in this regard.
I think it would be a huge success if any Vietnamese star or dancer participated in the StarDance competition. That still hasn’t happened. At least there were representatives of the Czech-Vietnamese community in Masterchef, which is nice. This is exactly the example that shows other teenage Vietnamese that there is something else to do besides being in a shop, a bistro, or becoming a mobster.
Apart from StarDance, where do you think the representation of the Vietnamese community is lacking?
Certainly in movies and series. Sometimes such characters appear in Czech productions, but they are always stereotypical. I would like Vietnamese people to be portrayed more in more classic roles, such as partner, friend, father, daughter… So that the differences between Czechs and Vietnamese are blurred.
In my opinion, diversity is generally lacking in Czech society. Even in politics, there are few diverse people – from women to homosexuals to people of color. In this regard, the Czech Republic is far from Western countries, it is not progressive at all. And it seems to me that people are closing in on themselves more and more. I think it means that a large part of the Czech population are racists. Fear of the unknown plays a fundamental role in this. People here do not have Arabs as neighbors, they are not their favorite grocers or cooks. Therefore, for them, every Arab is a terrorist. I don’t want to generalize and throw everyone in the same bag, I just wish that Czech society was more open.
What convinced you that Czechs do not accept diversity?
Probably the stay in France and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am watching how one-sidedly some Czech media reports about him. As if it is forgotten that there are also innocent civilians on the Palestinian side, including a million children. There is a huge diversity in France, in Paris I took part in two demonstrations in support of the people in Gaza. It’s great not to have a colonial history, but on the other hand, people are not at all used to a diverse population.
Vietnamese people in the Czech Republic have gained popularity over the past years, but racism against us still persists. And even systemic racism. I realize this in a lot of things, for example when we flew back to the Czech Republic from a vacation in Vietnam. My luggage was checked much more than the luggage of my boyfriend, who is Czech. And I have a Czech passport. I was interrogated, for example from whom I bought the laptop, if I carry cash and the like. This really pisses me off because I know it was just based on the color of my skin.
You have completed a prestigious artistic residency of several months in Paris, which is awarded by the Cannes International Film Festival to budding filmmakers. What did he help you with?
It’s the best thing that could have happened to me. This is a tremendous opportunity for budding filmmakers. I am the first female director from the Czech Republic and Vietnam to attend this residency. It motivates me a lot, all the mentors treat us like a generation of promising filmmakers, which is a bit challenging because then you feel the pressure. We are in contact with French producers who are watching us closely. In May we will have presentations in Cannes in front of hundreds of producers. I’m a little stressed about it, but this residency has opened a lot of doors for me anyway.
Each of us has our own consultant based on his or her experience. I was assigned a French-Georgian director who made it to Cannes with her two films. She’s also a screenwriter, which is great. I have the space and time to fully concentrate on the subject of my film. I have the opportunity to read, get inspired, think about my topic. For the first two months, I just wrote notes, only after the consultations did I start writing a new version. It helped me a lot that I suddenly didn’t have to focus on anything else. In Prague, I would still deal with my responsibilities, which is fine, but then there is not enough time.
Photo author: Tomáš Vocelka
Diana Cam Van Nguyen (30 let)
- The Czech director and artist was born in Cheb to Vietnamese parents.
- She graduated from the Cheb gymnasium, then furniture design at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Prague. She graduated from the Department of Animation at FAMU under the guidance of Michaela Pavlátová.
- Diana’s work is characterized by a playful and inspiring combination of animated and documentary passages.
- The bachelor film Malá (2018) won the ECFA Doc Award for Best Documentary for Children at the 2019 Berlinale.
- Her other films include Spolu sami (2017), she is also the author of the animated sequences in the feature film Dawn (2023).
- For the autobiographical film Dear Dad, she won the Czech Film Critics Award for the best short film. Czech Lion in the Best Short Film category and the Magnesia Award for the best student film. It was also awarded as the best short student film at the Anifilm animated film festival, where it also won an award in the same category in the national competition Český obzor
2024-02-07 13:13:08
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