The Cloud is Gone (ĐÁM MÂY BAY MẤT)
2022 · 21m · Vietnam
Directed by Nguyen Viet Anh
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A married man returns to a familiar place and recalls fragmented moments with his lost wife, while the city around him races to redevelop and erase what they once shared.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects grief to be interior, psychological—Nguyen Viet Anh just says no and straps the whole thing to a wrecking ball, which is either obvious or brilliant depending on whether you're tired of watching people stare at rain; the demolition conceit walks a knife's edge and somehow doesn't faceplant.
A formally precise elegy that inherits from the Vietnamese New Wave's spatial poetics while updating the vocabulary—the synchronization of personal memory loss with urban erasure recalls Tarkovsky's archaeology of place, executed here with restraint and architectural specificity that rewards close attention.
The decision to let the city's reconstruction *become* the narrative device rather than decorate it is what transforms a familiar grief story into something that breathes; every cut between rubble and remembered domestic space is doing the emotional work without needing to tell you how to feel.
Reviews
Phim ngắn giàu tính hình tượng mang lại chiến thắng giòn giã tại Golden Door Awards 2023
Grand Prize Winner — The Cloud Is Gone
Festivals
- CinemaSHORT Asia Film Festival 2023, Grand Prize
- Golden Door Awards 2023, Best Short Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography
- Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (NAFF Fantastic Film School) 2022