Photo: Courtesy of Focus Features
Three Seasons
Three Seasons is a film that refuses to be forgotten, no matter how many pixelated YouTube links or glitchy pirate DVDs try to consign it to oblivion. A gem shot on the country's soil (and the first of its kind) just as the US decided to play nice, Tony Bui's debut feature is a love letter to rain-soaked Saigon, a city caught in the whirlwind of change. The story weaves together four lives: a cyclo driver (Đơn Dương) who finds a kindred spirit in a world-weary prostitute (Zoe Bui); a street kid (Nguyễn Hữu Được) who befriends US G.I. James (Harvey Keitel); and a young vendor (Ngọc Hiệp) who seeks beauty in the fleeting perfection of lotus flowers. It's a tale that's at once gritty and poetic, the snapshot of a place where the old and the new collide in a dance of beauty and despair. Three Seasons' long-overdue return to the festival circuit isn't just a tech upgrade—it's a rescue mission for a film that deserves to be seen in all its poetic glory.