​//DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT//

​I first knew what it meant to be "stateless" in 2014. That first encounter with stateless families on the Mekong in Long Xuyen, Vietnam, led to my chance directorial debut, the short documentary "Down The Stream". The sights I saw, the lives I heard of, and the people I met never left me. Eight years later, I have planted seeds for a bundle of projects about statelessness in Mekong. LUA is one of them.

 

Lua is a short film made from a few scenes from my feature-length film project, “THE RIVER KNOWS OUR NAMES." It can be considered a demo for the feature film—a part of our technical and aesthetic explorations. It is also an exercise in working with and involving the community in the filmmaking process, which is essential to the philosophy of this particular film project.​LUA offers a brief glimpse into the lives of some stateless boat women who find themselves trapped, belonging nowhere, and with few opportunities to break the cycle.

 

The intention behind the film is to create a fictional space and a time where a woman like them lives and breathes, dreams and breaks, loses and fights again. The decision to film in Long Xuyen, An Giang province, where the director first encountered stateless individuals living along the Mekong, was a deliberate choice. The garish, fanciful set designs testify to the poetry, tenderness, and hopefulness in Lua’s life. It also borrows from observations of this community's aesthetics, which stems from an interest in ethnological research and cultural preservation.

 

The camera work was designed to a slow rhythm to invite an attentive gaze and listening. The camera is trapped on the boat, mirroring Lua, who hardly travels outside the bounds of her houseboats and looks out at the world, not knowing of many places she can go.​​The film casts real-life mother and daughter Tha and Lon from a family I have befriended from this stateless community. The casting choice is a gesture to involve the community in the storytelling process.

 

The film and its production process reflect respect for the historical and cultural undercurrents that go beyond what meets the eye. This lies at this short's philosophical and ethical core, as well as the feature-length films and other satellite productions on this theme.

 

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