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Viet Film Festival comes to Huntington Beach’s Bella Terra

A scene from the film, "Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy."
A scene from the science fiction film, “Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy,” directed by Ham Tran. The film will show Friday evening on the first day of the festival’s in-person screenings.
(Courtesy of the Viet Film Fest)
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Viet Film Fest is officially back.

The event, which began at the start of this month and will continue through Oct. 15, is being held in a hybrid format this year. While entries so far have been shown virtually, films will be screened Friday and Saturday at the Century Huntington Beach movie theater in Bella Terra, which organizers noted is the closest the festival has ever been staged to the heart of Little Saigon .

While other screenings will be held throughout the day, the opening night feature is a science fiction story, “Maika: The Girl From Another Galaxy,” by director Ham Tran, who grew up in Santa Ana but later moved to Vietnam to pursue filmmaking.

This is the 13th time the festival, organized by the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Assn., has been held.

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VAALA executive director Ysa Le said the festival began in 2003 and was held at UC Irvine biannually. Not many Vietnamese films were available then, and Le laughed as she recalled the organization screening 35-milimeter film reels.

By 2013 more Vietnamese films became available, and the event became annual.

It was last held in-person at the AMC Theaters at the Outlets at Orange. COVID-19 put the festival on hold, but organizers brought it back digitally last year with limited screenings at the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana.

While this year’s festival is still primarily online, the in-person screenings allow people to see the films as intended — up on the big screen, Le said.

Festival artistic director Eric Nong said planning for this year’s festival began as soon as last year’s concluded. Nong said that while the digital platform brought in audiences from all over the world, it was important to organizers that the films could also be seen in a local theater.

“The festival has local roots,” said Nong. “We can’t deny that, and the largest population of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam is here in Orange County.”

Nong said the film festival isn’t only about the Vietnamese film industry but a unique “collision” of cultures within the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, Canada, France and Germany. The only qualification for films to be screened in the festival, he said, was that Vietnamese people be depicted or be behind the camera.

A scene from the film, "The Brilliant Darkness," from director Aaron Toronto.
A scene from the film, “The Brilliant Darkness,” from director Aaron Toronto will be screened at the Bella Terra on Saturday.
(Courtesy of the Viet Film Fest)

“When we first established this, we didn’t foresee that films would have become something that is a part of daily life,” Le said. “Films have become so accessible. It becomes a great means to tell stories and telling stories from our community’s perspective is important. We are more diverse than just the war, especially when the mainstream thinks about us.

“The Asian hate crimes and everything — our stories. If we put it out there, then we will create more understanding and also create more awareness.”

Tran, the director of “Maika,” said the Vietnamese film industry is still in its infancy, having only seen significant growth in the last decade with investment from Korean multiplex cinema chain CGV Cinemas. Prior to that, he said, much Vietnamese entertainment centered around music and was prominent in variety shows such as “Paris By Night” or used in government propaganda.

Tran said completing “Maika,” was a miracle. Filming started in Da Nang in August 2019, and the monsoon season delayed further filming. Then he faced a shortage of key crew members who took on commercial jobs during the holiday season that year.

Filming resumed in February 2020 but lasted only a short time before one of the first cases of COVID-19 was identified in Da Nang.

The filmmakers scouted new locations in Saigon, which subsequently shut down as the pandemic spread through the country, and in Vũng Tàu and Di Linh. Indoor scenes were shot on a sound stage with pandemic restrictions.

On top of those challenges, the child actors in the film had largely outgrown their costumes by the time filming concluded. Tran said other issues popped up during post-production, but the film was completed just days before the submission deadline for this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

“We just powered through ... and made the film through all the obstacles,” Tran said. “That’s the message of the film is about too: It’s overcoming hardship. The film itself is about a boy who loses his mother and is so overcome with grief that he doesn’t know how to move past until he meets a little alien girl who crash lands and searches for her friend.”

Tran said he had made plans to leave the film industry, when in 2018 he suffered the same loss as the movie’s main character, Hung. He said he struggled with grief over losing his mother and planned on moving back to Orange County because he didn’t want to be so far away from his family. Ultimately, however, he decided to stay in Vietnam and make the film because he wanted to dedicate it to her.

“Families — we just have to be there for each other,” Tran said. “This is Vietnam’s first sci-fi family film, but beyond that. It’s not just a kid’s film.”

Le said the film festival includes stories about families, gender, sexuality and domestic violence. She said the Vietnamese community faces similar struggles to those other minorities face. By sharing those difficulties, people can learn from one another, she added.

“Our culture has a lot of beautiful things and traditions. We have community and family values still; we want to do that and bring out the stories that you rarely see in the mainstream media that show we are real people — not just someone here for five minutes and dies,” she said.

For a schedule of the films included in the festival and additional information, visit vietfilmfest.com.

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