Travelling Circus (1989)

One of the most acclaimed Vietnamese films of the 1980s, The Traveling Circus won numerous international awards, including Grand Prix at Fribourg Third world Film Festival, Audience Award at Uppsala (Sweden) International Film Festival and First Prize at Madrid Women’s Film Festival. With obvious influences from Bergman, DeSica and Fellini, director Viet Linh tells the bittersweet story of a small traveling circus from Hanoi stopping in an impoverished ethnic minority village in Vietnam’s central highlands. Through the eyes of a village youngster, we witness the magic of the circus, and the naïve hope that illusion can be transformed into reality. The Traveling Circus is an extremely realistic, sensitive and moving film, that is rarely shown either in Vietnam or abroad.