Trần Anh Hùng

Trần Anh Hùng (English: Anh Hung Tran), born December 23, 1962) is a Vietnamese-born French filmmaker.

Early life and education Hung was born in Da Nang, South Vietnam. Following the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, he immigrated to France at age 12.

Hung majored in philosophy at a university in France. By chance, he saw Robert Bresson's film A Man Escaped and decided to study film instead. He went on to study photography at the National School Supérieure Louis-Lumière, which trains cinematographers and supported himself by working in the Musée d'Orsay bookshop.

Film career Hung has been at the forefront of a wave of acclaimed overseas Vietnamese cinema over the past two decades. His films have received international fame and acclaim, and his first three features were varied meditations on life in his home country of Vietnam.

Hung's Oscar-nominated debut (for Best foreign film) was The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), which also won two top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. His follow-up Cyclo (1995, which featured Hong Kong movie star Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), won the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival. The Vertical Ray of the Sun, released in 2000, was the third film in his "Vietnam trilogy."

After a sabbatical, Hung returned with the noir psychological thriller I Come with the Rain (2009), which featured a star-studded international cast including Josh Hartnett and Elias Koteas.

Hung directed Norwegian Wood, an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's novel of the same name, which was released in Japan in December 2010.

Films on Vietnam In France, Hung studied at the film school ENS Louis-Lumière. For his graduation project in 1987 he wrote and directed a short film La femme mariée de Nam Xuong, inspired by an old Vietnamese folk tale (Truyền kỳ mạn lục).

Following this Hung made another short film, La pierre de l'attente (1989), before launching the feature film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993). The Scent of Green Papaya was acclaimed for its style and its beautiful images of Vietnamese life. To date, the film is the only representative of Vietnamese cinema to be nominated for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The success of Papaya helped Hung gain funding for the next film, Cyclo. The film tells stories of poor people living in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly called Saigon), and was filmed on location there. Cyclo won the Golden Lion at 52nd Venice International Film Festival, and at the age of 33, Hung was one of the youngest filmmakers to be thus honored there.

Having depicted life in Ho Chi Minh City, Hung turned his attention to Hanoi in The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000). The main characters of the film are three sisters who idolize their parents' family life, before the truth is revealed after the mother's death.

Influences and style of film-making Hung's films are made to rebuild the image of Vietnam that he lost when immigrating to France, and to provide the audience with another point of view on Vietnam when this topic has been long dominated by French and American cinema. The stories are based on Hung's knowledge about Vietnamese culture and (in the second and third films) his first-hand experience gained from trips to the country.

Hung is strongly influenced by French cinema and from some European and Japanese filmmakers, namely Bergman, Bresson, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Ozu. He denies the conventional story-telling style and pursues making films with a new language: "to challenge the audiences' feelings, making them enjoy the films not with the critical reasoning but the language of the body".

Filmography

Feature Film Year English Title Original Title 1993 The Scent of Green Papaya Mùi đu đủ xanh 1995 Cyclo Xích lô 2000 The Vertical Ray of the Sun Mùa hè chiếu thẳng đứng 2009 I Come with the Rain 2010 Norwegian Wood ノルウェイの森 2016 Eternity Eternité 2023 The Taste of Things La Passion de Dodin Bouffant Short Film Year English Title Original Title 1989 La femme mariée de Nam Xuong Người thiếu phụ Nam Xương 1991 La pierre de l'attente La pierre de l'attente

Accolades + Awards and nominations received by Trần Anh Hùng Organizations Year Category Work Result Academy Awards 1994 Best International Feature Film The Scent of Green Papaya 2024 The Taste of Things Astra Film Awards 2024 Best International Feature Best International Filmmaker British Film Institute 1994 Sutherland Trophy The Scent of Green Papaya Cannes Film Festival 1989 Critics' Week Grand Prize Short Film La femme mariée de Nam Xuong 1993 Award of the Youth The Scent of Green Papaya Caméra d'Or 2000 Un Certain Regard The Vertical Ray of the Sun 2023 Best Director The Taste of Things Palme d'Or César Awards 1994 Best Debut The Scent of Green Papaya CineLibri 2016 Grand Prize for Best Literary Adaptation Eternity Deauville Asian Film Festival 2011 Best Film Norwegian Wood Film Fest Ghent 1995 Grand Prix for Best Film Cyclo International Istanbul Film Festival 2011 Fipresci Prize Norwegian Wood Lund International Fantastic Film Festival 2009 Siren Award - Best International Film I Come with the Rain Magritte Awards 2017 Best Foreign Film in Coproduction Eternity Mill Valley Film Festival 2023 Audience Award – World Cinema The Taste of Things Miskolc International Film Festival 2023 Emeric Pressburger Prize Montclair Film Festival 2023 Audience Award – World Cinema Palm Springs International Film Festival 2024 Best International Feature Film San Sebastián International Film Festival 2023 Culinary Zinema Best Film Award Sydney Film Festival 2011 Sydney Film Prize Norwegian Wood Torino Film Festival 1989 Best Short Film La femme mariée de Nam Xuong Venice Film Festival 1995 Fipresci Award Cyclo Golden Lion 2010 Norwegian Wood Vietnamese International Film Festival 2013 Inspiration Award — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association 2023 Best Foreign Language Film The Taste of Things