THE THIRD WIFE
Ash Mayfair | 2018 | Vietnam | 94’ | Fiction
In 19th century rural Vietnam, 14-year-old May becomes the third wife of wealthy landowner Hung. Soon, she learns that she can only gain status by asserting herself as a woman who can give birth to a male child. May's hope to change her status turns into a real and tantalizing possibility when she gets pregnant. Faced with forbidden love and its devastating consequences, May finally comes to an understanding of the brutal truth: the options available to her are few and far between.
Ash Mayfair was born in Vietnam and educated in the UK and the US. She received a BA from Oxford University for English Literature, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for theatre directing and received an MFA in filmmaking at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her first feature, The Third Wife, was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the NETPAC Jury Award, and also won awards at the San Sebastian, Milano, Chicago, Minsk, Kolkata and Cairo film festivals. Ash is working on her second feature, tentatively titled Skin of Youth, about an all-consuming love story between a transgender singer and a dog-cage fighter set in 1990s Saigon, Vietnam.