Living in Fear

A short film by Bùi Thạc Chuyên that won third prize in the short film category at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.

In 1967, as the Vietnam War raged, a Vietnamese revolutionary guerrilla team became the U.S. military's top target—charged with safeguarding a secret group of intelligence agents at all costs.

Set in the poor Mekong Delta coastal village of Thơm Rơm, the film follows the lives of three women, whose love lives are unusual and unique to their nature. The film is narrated from Hau's perspective, as she experiences life with a husband who only has eyes for another woman, and develops her growing friendship with her rival.

The film tells the scary, haunting adventures of three medical university students who accidentally discover a species of wormwood that is made with human blood in an ancient wooden box containing a piece of withered tree and amulet. He placed it deep in a messy bookshelf in Professor Hoan Sinh's house. That is wormwood blood, a secret medicine of the Sang La people.

Soon after her wedding, newlywed Duyen's excitement begins to fade as she realizes her young husband is not only naive but overly occupied by his job and doting mother. As her marriage goes unconsummated and her emotional isolation grows, she reaches out to her closest girlfriend, Cam, who secretly desires her, but pushes her into the arms of a dangerous and provocative suitor. The resulting infidelity puts Duyen in a precarious love triangle, challenging her notions of conventional relationships and also the stability of her new family.

Bùi Thạc Chuyên travels around rural northern Vietnam to research about classical xẩm singing and its last surviving performer Hà Thị Cầu.

A young policeman is determined to trace down the elusive Windy Devil Gang that has been wrecking terror and fear across the city. As the chase seems to know no bounds, the possibilities of discovery dissolve into infinity.

In Bình Thuận, a South Central coastal province in Vietnam, a former Republic soldier turned farmer went into clearing landmines for over ten years, reclaiming the soil for himself and others, generating also controversies around the legitimacy and safety of his practice.