The Czech Republic has the third-largest Vietnamese diaspora in Europe, only behind Germany and France. In fact, the Vietnamese make up the third-largest ethnic minority in the country after Slovaks and Ukrainians. Now, this community is buzzing about its chance to be represented and make its presence felt on the silver screen. After all, Tuesday, July 8, marks the world premiere of Dužan Duong’s Summer School, 2001 in the Special Screenings program of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF).
Or as KVIFF put it: “The long-awaited first Czech-Viet feature is finally here! This authentic portrayal of a community that has become an organic part of modern Czech history is brought to us courtesy of Dužan Duong, a standout, exceptionally talented representative of the first Vietnamese generation to grow up in the Czech Republic.”
Here is a synopsis of the movie: “The third millennium has hardly begun, and 17-year-old Kien with his crazy red hair returns to his family and their market stall in Cheb after 10 years spent in Vietnam. However, instead of the warm welcome he had anticipated, he finds an estranged father, a careworn mother, and a younger brother who doesn’t cut him any slack.”
Prague-based Duong, 34, wrote the screenplay for his feature directorial debut with Jan Smutný and Lukáš Kokeš. Duong and Kokeš are the producers of the movie. Its cast includes Đoàn Hoàng Anh, Lê Quỳnh Lan, Tô Tiến Tài, Bùi Thế Duong, Ngô Xuân Thắng, and Nguyễn Dũng.
“Told with lightness and wit, this story about cross-generational conflict and much else besides is an affectionate and bold milestone in the debate on cultural identity,” the KVIFF website touts.
Ahead of the world premiere of Summer School, 2001, Duong talked to THR about the inspiration for the film, showcasing the Vietnamese experience in the Czech Republic to a wider audience, pulling double duty in Karlovy Vary by also pitching an anime series idea, and what else he wants to do next.
Can you maybe share your family’s story and how your parents came to the Czech Republic?
My parents met in Germany during the Cold War. They were sent from Vietnam to Germany to work. They met in a factory. And they conceived me there. When that era ended, they had to go back to Vietnam. So I was born in Vietnam. After three, four years, we went from Vietnam to the Czech Republic. And this is the story of most of the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic. We have similar paths.
In Summer School, 2001, a young man returns to his family in the Czech Republic after years back in Vietnam. Can you talk about the role identity plays in the film?
When I was just a small kid, my parents had to go to this marketplace to earn money, because they had some debts in Vietnam. Because we went from Vietnam to the Czech Republic, they had to loan some money. So I had to grow up with a Czech nanny and Czech granddad, actually, and they were my substitute parents for a very long time. My parents had to work a lot during my childhood. So I was growing up with this old Czech couple. They made me the Czech person I am.
They taught me the culture and everything. That’s the reason I feel somehow split in my personality – being Czech or Vietnamese. It’s very hard to be Vietnamese when you don’t get to meet your parents in everyday situations and spend most of your time with Czech people. So that’s the first step in my story about this broken relationship with one’s parents.
‘Summer School, 2001’
Courtesy of KVIFF
The members of the family in the film seem to experience this mix of emotions, including duty, respect, and love. Talk a bit about the many layers of these relationships in the film and how you approached them.
To be honest, it’s just my family and many other Vietnamese families packed into one film. We like to call it “auto-fiction,” because it all comes from the real world of the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic. So most of it is based on reality. But we added some drama for the film.
Can I ask how difficult it was to finance the film?
It actually wasn’t that hard, because we have a production company, and we specialize in shorts and commercials. So we had a base of people and didn’t need that much of money. We could rely on a lot of people with good intentions and good hearts who wanted to make this, I would say, milestone in Czech cinema. This kind of Vietnamese film from the Czech Republic has never been done before. So we were very lucky to be at the beginning of what will hopefully be this new wave.
What feedback have you received from the Vietnamese community in the country before people have even seen the film? What do they think of the idea that there will be a feature about their experience?
Oh, they love it. I really feel such huge support from the community. It’s not usual for a debut film to be hyped this much. The power of community! The film hasn’t premiered yet, so I’m quite nervous about it. I don’t want to make anybody unhappy when they finish watching the film. The stakes are high for us.
Will your family see the movie?
Yeah, most of my family will see it for the first time, wow. And I’m really looking forward to seeing their faces. In our family, and in general in Vietnamese families, communication is not the biggest thing. Our Vietnamese parents don’t know the Czech language that well. So this film is a way for me to tell them everything I’ve been through in my whole life. And I noticed during the shoot that many aspects of the film happen to be universal, because many young people from the cast were going through similar problems.
Dužan Duong, Courtesy of KVIFF
How long did you work on the movie?
It was really encouraging for me to finish the film after eight years. We were in the writing room for quite a while – five, six years. And once we got the first funding, I didn’t want to wait for anything. I went all in and persuaded the other producers that we needed to make it now, because I found a good cast, and its members were growing up. So if we had been waiting for another year, I would have had to find other actors.
Who are the people in the cast? Are they professional actors, and how did you find them?
The young boy in the family is from my neighborhood. I’ve known him since he was little. His family runs the grocery store right down from my apartment. He was always this communicative young boy who wanted to have fun. He reminded me of me a little bit, so I thought I’m going to cast him. I just went by heart. I didn’t want to have many options. Once I felt he was the right person, I went for him.
Most of the actors are first-time actors. I like to work this way. I’m always looking for someone who is authentic and who doesn’t need to “act.” He just needs to be reminded of his own traumas or his story. And he just needs to act it out in front of the camera.
Was there any particularly big challenge in making this movie?
To be honest, the biggest challenge was in the editing room. We made quite a big chunk of it happen in the editing room. Because non-professional actors don’t care if they look good on camera, we had some unique takes and had to find and put together the right material. We’ve been in the editing room for almost 13 months. It was quite painful, but I wouldn’t change that.
The three men in the family each get a chapter in the film. The mother doesn’t have her own chapter, but she is still always there. Can you explain that decision and the role of the mother?
For me, it’s a story about how to be a man, looking for manhood. And these guys are wild. Every one of them is wild. The only person who is somehow calm is the mother. She is the calm force trying to make sense of the mess that is happening. So she’s very important to the story. I wanted to keep this masculine point of view, but I used the female energy to make sense of it.
‘Summer School, 2001’
Courtesy of KVIFF
Tell me about your production company and the other key production firm on the film…
AZN kru is my production company. I run it with my wife. So, it’s a little family business. We’ve been doing commercials and everything, and now we are transitioning to features and fiction, and we want to make a splash in the Czech Republic. The other company is my friend’s and is called nutprodukce. They’re well established in the Czech Republic, so we can use their credit to get funding. All the creativity came from our side, including the Vietnamese aspect. And they provided the perfect dramaturgy and the know-how to fund a low-budget film. We brought the know-how of Vietnamese people, how to save money, and still have the production value.
Where did you shoot?
My biggest dream was to shoot it in Cheb, the town where I grew up, near the border with Germany. But our budget didn’t allow that. So we had to fake everything in Prague. When you see Netflix and Amazon shooting these big TV shows in Prague, they can fake it. So we can fake it as well. We just faked the small town and shot 23 days in Prague and Slovakia and five days in Vietnam.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention about Summer School, 2001?
In the film, Kien is sent back to Vietnam by his parents and then is reunited with them after 10 years. I would highlight that this is a very common thing in Vietnamese immigrant culture. That’s the way parents have the time and their hands free to work.
During the shooting process, I realized that this idea of sending kids away was weird for Czech people. But for the Vietnamese people, it’s a common thing. It also happened to me when I was young, like 5 or 6 years old. But I was lucky that my Czech nanny somehow persuaded my father to bring me back after a couple of months.
anime series ‘Lost Boys’
Courtesy of KVIFF
You are not only premiering your first feature at the festival, but also pitching Lost Boys, an anime series that you are working on, again via AZN and nutprodukce. You are pitching that in the KVIFF Talents program. Congratulations on having the energy to present two projects in Karlovy Vary! And what can you share about Lost Boys and its inspiration?
The work ethic, I think, I inherited from my parents, because I don’t like to just stand still and do nothing. This is my next project. I have a little sister who is 18 years younger. She’s Gen Z, and I would say I’m a millennial. And I noticed that these kids are so reliant on technology and social media, and it’s consuming them. I think it’s the biggest problem for this generation, being stuck in technology. They don’t know what the offline world is. They only know the online.
Lost Boys is the story of a girl who’s trying to find her escape or exit from this matrix. She finds a group of boys who get into fights. They like to feel the realness of the fights. And she wants to join them, but they don’t accept her, because she’s a girl. “We accept only boys, because we are the Lost Boys.” And so she changes her outfit, and she becomes a boy. She becomes Kenny and wants to join the group so she can finally be happy and feel something. I would say it’s like Fight Club for Gen Z.
