Spring Roll Dream
2022 · 9m · UK
Directed by Mai Vu
Tones: melancholic, tender
A Vietnamese single mother in America is confronted with the culture she left behind when her father visits from Vietnam and insists on cooking a traditional meal of spring rolls, forcing her to reckon with where her past belongs in her family's new life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Stop-motion spring rolls as intergenerational immigrant metaphor — Cannes Lights on Women award and a Bao comparison locks the lane. Probably tender and good and exactly the thing I've already seen six times.
Vu's stop-motion handcrafted spring rolls won Cannes' Lights on Women award, and the tactile materiality of food-as-cultural-object places her in the productive lineage of Domee Shi's Bao but with greater formal control. An evident achievement.
Cannes Film Festival 2022 Lights on Women Award and NFTS-produced — 9:19 of handcrafted stop-motion using actual spring rolls as tactile cultural object is precisely the kind of medium-message alignment Cannes recognizes. Food preparation as immigrant emotional language is well-trodden territory; Mai Vu's puppet textures earn it.
Reviews
Especially effective in how perfectly it captures the feeling of being stuck, with its central character caught in between her present and her past, making the release provided at the end all the more touching.
The screenplay uses spring rolls as a catalyst for reflection, and at its core, the film is all about sharing, which makes it all the more engaging when it's denied.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2022, Lights on Women Award
- SXSW 2023
- Edinburgh International Film Festival 2023
- Palm Springs ShortFest
- Seattle International Film Festival