在沙丘景观中间的一个古老的墓地：母亲和儿子在坟墓之间徘徊，寻找已故父亲的安息之地。从对面的沙丘往下看，一个男人用望远镜看着他们。沙丘现在是俯瞰城市的高尔夫球场的一部分。公墓被卖掉了，旧坟墓被挖掘出来了。池塘里大鱼的动作让人想起了沃尔克施伦道夫的“锡鼓”里的鳗鱼。这个男人打高尔夫球，他年轻的女朋友想做整形手术。在社会商业化过程中对城镇和地方进行重新分区。在优雅、精心设计的镜头中，PhamNgocLan以平等的方式将未来和现在联系起来。这种叙事方式是由“存在”行为中对生与死的不同文化理解所启发的。我们不记得了，我们在想象中。 An old cemetery in the middle of a dune landscape: mother and son wander between graves in search of the resting place of the deceased father. Looking down from the opposing dune, a man watches them through binoculars. The dunes are now part of a golf course overlooking the city. The cemetery was sold, the old graves were excavated. The movements of the big fish in the pond are reminiscent of the eels in Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum. The man plays golf, and his young girlfriend thinks about plastic surgery. A re-zoning of towns and places in the course of society’s commercialisation. In elegant, carefully framed shots, Pham Ngoc Lan links the future and the present on equal terms. This narrative approach is enlightened by a different cultural understanding of life and death in the act of ‘being’. We do not remember, we are in our imagination.

Stories told along the river: a woman reunites with her ex-lover at a hydroelectric plant; meanwhile, a young man travels downstream to a temple in search of a cure for his insomnia.

A woman tries to cling onto dimming links to her past after inheriting a pygmy slow loris from her long-estranged husband; meanwhile, her niece prepares for marriage as the young couple ponders their gloomy future together. The present and the complex echoes of Vietnamese history are entwined before a contemplative and poetic perspective.

MEKONG 2030 is a film anthology comprising five short stories that envision the future of the Mekong River from different cultural perspectives.

The Story of Ones gives a face and a sense of place to the unseen and offers a personal counterpoint to the officially sanctioned. Like entering a roomful of stories, the viewer steps into an unfamiliar space guided only by the sound of the Vietnamese state radio tuning in to lifestyle programming, call-in shows and radio dramas. Portraits of daily life are layered atop the aural landscape creating questions and humorous situations and offering the viewer whole new perspectives on what once seemed normal.

When the urban landscape shapes the human relations: a mature woman, a bride and a group of young people seek proximity in the anonymity of the big city.