Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.
Cinematography
Every frame looks like a dissociative fever dream of Saigon humidity.
Acting
Tony Leung's silent slaughterhouse scene — no dialogue, all presence.
Score
Subtle sound design that makes traffic feel like breathing.
Director
Trần Anh Hùng
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Trần Anh Hùng filmed this after returning to Vietnam for the first time since fleeing as a child; the outsider's gaze explains both the poetry and the distance.
The slaughterhouse scenes used a real working facility — those pigs were actually being killed, which Leung reportedly found genuinely traumatizing to film.
FR
HK
