Don't Cry, Butterfly
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Polish premiereTheatrical Screenings
Kinoteka 3
Kinomuzeum
Online Availability
Additional Materials
Film description
When Ha learns from a television broadcast about her husband’s affair, she decides to do everything she can to repair her family relationships. But is anyone besides her truly interested in restoring the old order? Can visits to a shaman or a beautician really help? The damp stain spreading day by day across the ceiling becomes a metaphor for the futility of chasing after something that has already been lost. Meanwhile, Ha’s relationship with her daughter, who is doing everything she can not to repeat her mother’s mistakes, grows increasingly strained.
In her films, Dương Diệu Linh tells stories about middle-aged women. In her feature debut, she once again focuses on their place within a patriarchal society. The film’s central theme is the relationship between mother and daughter, two women who, shaped by cultural expectations, follow entirely different paths. The men remain in the background, yet like magnets, they attract and repel, influencing the course of the women’s lives. The director weaves elements of magical realism and body horror into the narrative, exploring what it truly means to be a butterfly in contemporary Vietnam.
Dương Diệu Linh
Vietnamese filmmaker Dương Diệu Linh often centres her films on sad, irritable middle-aged women. Her stories blend everyday reality with elements of magical realism deeply rooted in Southeast Asian mythology. She has participated in Berlinale Talents (2020), the Asian Film Academy (2016), and the Locarno Academy (2015). "Don’t Cry, Butterfly" is her feature debut, which, like her short films, places women at its core - women confronting life in a patriarchal society.
2017 Mẹ, con gái và những giấc mơ / Mother, Daughter, Dreams (short)
2019 Ngọt, Mặn / Sweet, Salty (short)
2020 Thiên đường gọi tên / A Trip to Heaven (short)
2024 Mưa trên cánh bướm / Don’t Cry, Butterfly
