In an uncertain future, when Vietnam is on the edge of being submerged in water, the son who is far away from home reimagines his family’s memories.
“The City of Mirrors: A Fictional Biography” enters the inner world of the filmmaker: his childhood memories, his family’s everyday life in their hometown… and by the magical transformations of cinema, those trivial stories and those banal images suddenly become un-real as if they are the reflections of what is beyond the reality.
Trương Minh Quý was born in Buon Ma Thuot, a small city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Quý lives and works here and there in the vibrancy of memories and present moments, his narratives and images, lying between documentary and fiction, personal and impersonal, draw on the landscape of his homeland, childhood memories, and the historical context of Vietnam. In his films, he has experimented with combining abstract concepts-images with realistic improvisations during shooting. He is the alumnus of 2012 Asian Film Academy (Busan International Film Festival) and 2016 Berlinale Talents (Berlin International Film Festival). His films have been selected for international film festivals and exhibitions such as Locarno, New York, Clermont-Ferrand, Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Busan, Les Rencontres Internationales Paris&Berlin. He won the main Art Prize at the 20th VideoBrasil (Sao Paulo) in 2017.
His second feature film, The Tree House, premiered in 72nd Locarno Film Festival (Filmmakers of The Present Competition, Swiss Critics Boccalino Award), where it was called among “Three of the festival’s best premieres” by MUBI and “a singular entrancing ode to memory and filmmaking” by The Film Stage. The film continued to screen in 57th New York Film Festival (Projections), Viennale, Festival Des 3 Continents (Competition), Rotterdam International Film Festival (Bright Future Main Program), CPH:Dox (Artist & Auteur), Goteborg International Film Festival, and others.