The Treasure
2021 · 20m · Vietnam
Directed by Vuong Huu Danh
Genres: drama, experimental, fantasy
Dao Luat and her ex Tu Cong embark on a treasure hunt inside a cursed mountain cave system in Vietnam's Central Highlands, where reality and illusion fold into each other as time loops and twisted doubles of themselves emerge from the dark.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A time-loop psychodrama shot in actual cave systems that treats genre mechanics as pure emotional archaeology—most scouts would've narrativized the surrealism to death, but Danh lets the doubled selves and looping time just *sit* there, uncomfortably external, which is exactly when experimental logic stops being clever and starts being true.
The film positions itself astutely within the lineage of Apichatpong's durational poetics and Vietnamese art cinema's investment in temporal ambiguity, though its psychological doubling feels more indebted to early Lynchian dream-logic than to a deeper formal tradition; the craft is assured, but the premise doesn't quite earn the weight it carries.
What transforms this from an ambitious premise into something singular is the decision to shoot entirely on location in actual cave systems—that geographical specificity, that real darkness pressing back against the actors, makes the time-loop disorientation feel *physical* rather than conceptual, and it's a choice that costs everything and gives you everything.
Festivals
- CinemaSHORT Asian Short Film Competition 2025