Le Do Hai Chau
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Hachul’s debut animated short became the first Vietnamese film selected for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2025 (often called the "Cannes of animation") since 1997—and only the second ever in the festival’s history.
In a world where men are fish and women are shrimp, which body of water carries those who are neither? Drawing inspiration from Vietnamese folklore and traditional musical theatre, this cross-temporal film tells the story of an anomaly—Trần Thanh Dương—who swims against the current of binaries with the spirit of a mythic species that fits nowhere. A fictional reimagining of Saint Gióng, the film explores identity, belonging, and transformation beyond convention.
It draws from my experience as a Vietnamese transgender person, and I found that this struggle is also reflected in Vietnamese mythology—specifically in the desire to transform into something greater and truer to oneself, a theme that appears throughout many Vietnamese folklore motifs.
“Trần Thanh Dương” is a placeholder name I created—akin to a Vietnamese version of John or Jane Doe—and it is intentionally genderless, fitting anyone of any gender. The character is a reimagined variant of the legend of Saint Gióng. When spoken aloud, Thanh Dương becomes a sonically distorted echo of Thánh Gióng, while Trần is derived from the prefix trans-, referencing both transgenderism and transhumanism. Thanh also means "green," which is why The Tale of Trần Thanh Dương uses a green monotone to represent “neither male nor female.”
This film production is funded by the RMIT Digital Design & Art Grants 2024 – School of Communication & Design, Vietnam.
Production Committee: Martin Constable, Nguyễn Hoàng Giang, and Ricardo Arce.