Red carpet opening

Judge arrives: Hollywood director Phillip Noyce (left) walks on red carpet at the Viet Nam International Film Festival's opening ceremony last night. — VNS Photo Viet Thanh

Sixty-eight films in a range of genres from 23 countries will be presented through Thursday and selected for festival awards. During the festival, in addition to viewing the films, audiences will have the chance to meet with Vietnamese and international documentarians, animators and film crews.

The Vietnamese premiere of Canh Dong Bat Tan (Floating Lives), an adaptation of the tragic novel by Nguyen Ngoc Tu and directed by Nguyen Phan Quang Binh, seems to be the most anticipated entry in the programme. It will be introduced on Wednesday at Platinum Cineplex, the Garden Mall, on Me Tri Road, Ha Noi. The film promises stunning visuals as it tells the story of a heartbroken rice farmer in the Mekong Delta and his love affair with a prostitute.

Competing for Best Feature Film are two Vietnamese films, Trung Uy (The Lieutenant) and Long Thanh Cam Gia Ca (The Fate of a Songstress in Thang Long) as well as films from China, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

"The first festival is an especially attractive event," says Le Tien Tho, vice minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism. "The festival will motivate cinema artists to create and help build a progressive Vietnamese culture with profound national character."

People's Artist Nguyen Hong Sen (1933-95) will be honoured for his life-long dedication to Vietnamese cinema. Yesterday afternoon, a ceremony and a photo exhibition were organised at the Ha Noi Opera House to pay tribute to him.

The most fascinating aspect of Sen's movies is not only their style – lyrical, romantic epic war films – but also their rich characters. With a background as a documentary cameraman, Sen brought his personal experiences to his feature films.

Leaving home at the age of 16 to join the resistance struggle against the French, Sen enrolled in his first film class and produced successful works, such as Duong Ra Phia Truoc (The Way Ahead), which won the Gold Medal at the 1967 Moscow Film Festival and Canh Dong Hoang (The Abandoned Field), which won the Gold Medal at the 1981 Moscow International Film Festival.

Canh Dong Hoang is considered the most successful movie of his career. The film is about the life of a southern farmer couple who work as the resistance liaisons on a rice field facing US helicopters everyday. The film's ending raises the humanity of the film to a new height and its 1981 prize was the first international award for a Vietnamese feature film.

With a successful and impressive film career, the director has written a powerful and impressive chapter in the story that is Viet Nam cinema.

"His films became successful not only because of their scale and arrangement but also their truthfulness," says actress Nguyen Mai Phuong, Sen's daughter.

"These works were made from his real experiences, not from reading books and hearing others' stories." — VNS