MONSOON
+ Director q&a
Director: HONG KHAOU
185 mins, UK, 2019, Digital, Subtitled.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Director Hong Khaou.
30-something Kit (Henry Golding, Crazy Rich Asians) returns to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon for the first time since he was six, his family having fled to England in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. He arrives ahead of his brother to seek out a place to scatter their parents’ ashes. He visits cousin Lee (David Tran), who helps him piece together hazy memories from his fractured childhood. Kit meets Lewis (Parker Sawyers), a handsome African American clothes designer whose father fought in the war. Romance sparks as Lewis introduces Kit to the more vibrant parts of the city.
Writer-director Hong Khaou (Lilting), Cambodian-Chinese by birth, lived in Vietnam until he was eight, his family having fled the Khmer Rouge. This is an intimate meditation on cultural dislocation and the search for belonging.
Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard.
