Saturday 15 November 2025
16:30–17:30 | CCA Cinema
A searing masterpiece of Vietnamese cinema that wields its gentle title as a weapon of social critique.
Trần Văn Thủy I 43m I Vietnam 1987 I Experimental Documentary I N/C 18
Trần Văn Thủy’s The Story of Kindness or How to Behave is not a moral fable but a radical and poetic act of witness. Created during Vietnam’s impoverished “Subsidy Period,” almost ten years after the official end of the American War in Vietnam, this experimental documentary constructs a stark, silent collage of a society grappling with the dissonance between ideology and daily survival.
Through its unflinching gaze—from the haunting corridors of a mental asylum to the brutal reality of a dog being butchered for food—the film interrogates the very possibility of “kindness” in a world stripped to its barest essentials. This restored landmark is a profound and challenging meditation on humanity, a film that finds unsettling beauty in the struggle to remain human.
The film was inspired by the final words of a dying filmmaker who urged his friends to create a film about “tu te,” meaning human relations and fraternity.
Introduced by filmmaker Esther Johnson, with a message from the film’s director.
Content Advisory Notes:
Disturbing Imagery: Includes graphic scenes of a dog being butchered and unflinching footage from inside a mental asylum.
Thematic Intensity: Deals with heavy themes of dehumanization, poverty, political repression, and social decay.
