Pa va hêng

Dust of Modern Life

DE | 2021 | Documentary | 82’ | OmU

03 Apr 2022 | 12:00
Odeon Köln
Internationales Frauenfilmfestival Dortmund | Köln
Book tickets

Liem carries his child next to his body for warmth, cooks for the family and works in the fields. But he is soon to leave the family for a few days. Together with other men of the Sedang, an ethnic minority in Vietnam, he heads for the jungle to recall a hidden way of life and feed on what nature provides.

Liem makes fires, hunts and moves through the woods. A dialogue in analogue film colours emerges between modern civilisation and fading traditions. While the silent hikers reflect on childhood and the imminent future of their own children, the nature surrounding them also has its own story. How long will these kind of rituals be possible? Will anyone remember them one last time before the fact that the Sedang once went into the jungle is forgotten forever?

Franziska von Stenglin tells the story from an observant and precise angle, without abandoning her role as director, and, perhaps by doing so, manages to create a film that resembles a painting. The camera captures a short period of time, containing signs of the past and present. At the same time, the latest adverts blare absurdly out of the loudspeakers, and mobile phones emit an unreal glow, looking as alien as they were to us once, but will never be again.

Guest: Franziska von Stenglin

Franziska von Stenglin grew up in the Czech Republic, Senegal, India, and Germany. She then studied at London University of the Arts and the Frankfurt Städelschule academy of fine arts. She works mainly with photography and video, but also with installations and sculptures. For several years now, she has been working on the significance of local myths and traditions for contemporary social relations in different cultures and societies. Among other places, she has worked in Mexico, Brazil and Vietnam where she looked particularly at forms of withdrawal from the demands of everyday life. Pa va hêng is her first feature-length film.

This film has been nominated for the Audience Award endowed with 1,000 euro. Please vote after watching the movie. You can find an overview of all nominated films here.