30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

In the modest hut in the foggy mountains of Vietnam, Di laughs with her friend, reading the exchange of messages with her boyfriend. But what would seem to be the usual adolescent dynamics are transformed by making life choices. Among the Hmong people, girls have to marry very young and often after a violent "bride kidnapping", on the occasion of the Lunar New Year. So Di, at the age of twelve, must already think seriously about getting engaged and marrying. Between her family and that of the boy the negotiations on the bride's dowry go on amidst hangovers from rice vodka. The adults talk and laugh about the girl's future, but do not listen to her wishes. Only the grandmother seems to understand that the girl wants to study and that she imagines a different life. The camera of director Ha Le Diem also follows the girl in her difficulty in rejecting the insistence of her young boyfriend and in the violence with which her family drags him away, under the gaze of mother and father who seem more concerned about the dowry than the future of their daughter.

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  Hà Lệ Diễm

  Born in 1991 in the mountains of northeastern Vietnam, she studied journalism at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi, where she graduated in 2013. She is a recipient of a scholarship from the Sundance Institute Documentary Program. Children of the Mist is her first documentary film project.