Today from 17:00-20.00 hrs, the UvA Film Club will continue their weekly screening in HVL/BuzzHouse’s Co-Working Space! This week's film is The Vertical Ray of the Sun (dir. Tran Anh Hung, 2000), with an introduction by Gia Tue Trinh.

"I wanted my film to feel like a caress. It had to have a gentle smile floating through it, a sort of floating feeling." – Tran Anh Hung, in an interview with Trevor Johnston for the London Independent.

The final film in Tran Anh Hung’s Vietnam trilogy, The Vertical Ray of The Sun (2000), presents a multisensory, picture-perfect portrayal of summertime in Hanoi. The film follows stories of three sisters: Suong, Khanh, and Lien—two married, one single—as they navigate their familial and love life in the idle rhythm of daily happenings. Their intertwined lives unfold amidst the poetic beauty of Vietnam’s lush tropical landscape and ritualistic practices, yet beneath it lies the emotional turmoil of infidelity. With a hybrid approach to cinema shaped by his exposure to French cinema and deep attachment to his Vietnamese heritage, Tran Anh Hung crafts a rather nostalgic and dreamlike vision of Vietnam. Like a gentle touch of the summery rain on the skin, the meticulous mixture of languid pacing, adrift camera, and atmospheric soundscape generates a tactile assemblage of familial bonds, longing, and quiet emotional turbulence. This approach not only offers the audience a sensory comfort but also prompts critical reflection on cultural hybridity and the representation of femininity through the cinematic language of a male diasporic filmmaker.