Yến

DOCUMENTARY/NARRATIVE SHORT

MAY 26, 2022

GER | 15 minutes | 2021

Drama, docufiction, LGBTQ+ short film directed by Julia Diệp My Feige
Starring Quỳnh Nhi Trần

For copyright purposes, the film requires a password for viewing.
Due to additional screening obligations, the password has been removed for the time being. We’ll be sure to update again when the film will be made available.

Yến is a pretty exceptional young woman and looks neither really female nor Vietnamese. Soon is Lunar New Year and she still has no boyfriend to present to her pressing mother. In order to finally meet social demands and ideals, she gets involved with an old acquaintance…

YẾN deals with the romanticization and idealization within the Vietnamese Confucianism-based society. The film oscillates between documentary and fiction whereby the main character serves as a projection of allegedly Vietnamese identity.

Director’s Statement

The film oscillates between documentary and fiction whereby the main character serves as a projection of allegedly Vietnamese identity. Although introducing an East Asian context the problem is universal and examined from a binational perspective. YÉN is also an attempt to extract the essence of North Vietnam into moving images.

YẾN deals with the idealization and over-romanticization in Confucian-influenced Vietnamese culture and its effects especially on female or queer individuals. Confucianism being society’s principle with age, sex and family position as its main criteria stand in huge contrast to Western individualism. It also gives precise definitions of success and luck while both can almost be used as synonyms. Although Yến is in constant transition, she cannot (yet) escape her socialization. She is disconnected like an alien to the people and the world around her. The luminous almost artificial choice of colors symbolizes the constructedness of ideals and gender norms. Imitation and self-staging are important social mechanisms and are reflected in East Asian photomania and selfie culture, which aim to reproduce a normative social ideal and create a real status. Automatically, heteronormative role clichés are adopted and the interchangeability in Yến’s choice of partner is demonstrated since the fulfillment of formal criteria already seems to suffice to fullfill the image.

– Julia Diệp My Feige

Yến is one of the many great projects shared with CineAsian Films through our submissions process. If you’d like to join them, submit your film.

Credits

Director, Writer, Editor: Julia Diệp My Feige
Cinematographer, Editor, Sound Design: Hanno Schröder
Editing and Sound design: Ebru Sara Bilen
Music: Tom Willems ‘TCV’, Vanny Bosch
Also starring: Việt Hoàng
Filmed on location in Vietnam