Sleeping Beauty

A modern tale of Kafka in Vietnam – a country in the middle of a transformation. The film feels like a piece of cultural news with daily events: a wedding, traffic congestion, a robbery, a mystical metamorphosis and a love story.

Minh lives in a village where every child is born with a tree on their heads, except for him. On graduation day, students who have turned 18 will get their tree cut to signify adulthood. Problems arise when Minh’s sister decides to keep hers.

In a weathered corner of Ostende's industrial zone, migrant workers gather for their daily cigarette break, where shared smoke and quiet conversations reveal the poetry in their hard-worn lives.