CHILDREN OF THE MIST
Hà Lệ Diễm | 2022 | Vietnam | 92’ | Documentary
In the misty mountains of North Vietnam, Di, a teenage Hmong girl, walks the line between childhood and adulthood. Waiting for the Lunar New Year festivities, during which Hmong men kidnap young girls in order to marry them, the girls of her minority are forced to lose their innocence in the struggle for their independence.
Hà Lệ Diễm was born in 1991 into the Tay ethnic minority group living in the mountains of northeast Vietnam. She left her hometown to study journalism at Hanoi University of Social Sciences and Humanities, from which she graduated in 2013. It was during a workshop at Ateliers Varan in Vietnam in 2016 that she directed her short documentary film Dans de beaux lits (Giuong Xinh). Her first feature-length documentary, Children of the Mist (2021), won multiple awards around the world: Best Director Award at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2021, the Clarens Humanist Documentary Award at the Festival Cinéma du Réel 2022, and was shortlisted for the Oscars in 2023, in the "Documentary Feature Films" category. Children of the Mist is her first feature documentary project. Hà Lệ Diễm is a grant holder at the Sundance Institute's documentary film program.