Impermanence (Vô Thường)
2020 · 19m · Vietnam
Directed by Pham Gia Quy
Genres: crime, drama, thriller
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tense
When a man falls from a second-floor window of a Chinese restaurant in Saigon, the incident is retold through the contradictory perspectives of bystanders, low-level criminals, and passersby — surreal connections binding strangers in a single moment of urban chaos. The title (Vô Thường, 'impermanence') frames the story as a meditation on how randomness and gossip shape Vietnamese narrative itself.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Rashomon retelling of a Saigon fall that refuses easy answers—built on gossip and contradiction rather than truth-seeking—is exactly the kind of structural subversion that should infuriate formalists and delight anyone tired of linear thriller mechanics.
Phạm Gia Quý situates this within a lineage of Japanese narrative fragmentation and Vietnamese oral storytelling tradition, but the real formal rigor lives in how the editing orchestrates competing voices into something that feels both chaotic and inevitably composed.
On a $64K budget, the decision to sustain actual kinetic chase sequences—not suggested or montaged, but lived—forces every other element (sound design, performance timing, camera placement) to work harder, and that constraint is what makes the surrealism feel earned rather than affected.
Reviews
Audiences appreciated the film's conversations, attitude, acting, and atmosphere of everyday life on Saigon streets — and the chase sequences stood out, a rare occurrence in Vietnamese cinema at that time.
A generational statement in contemporary Vietnamese cinema — self-financed and innovative in its multi-perspective narrative structure.
Festivals
- WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival 2020, Gold Remi Award
- LA Shorts International Film Festival 2020
- HollyShorts Film Festival 2020
- Brisbane International Film Festival 2020
- Norwich Film Festival 2020
- San Jose International Short Film Festival 2020
- Prague International Film Festival 2020, Best Young Filmmaker (Nominated)