Film screening «Quán Kỳ Nam» (Ky Nam Inn)

   Nineteen-eighties Saigon comes back on 35mm film in a non-profit community screening on the third floor of a converted factory complex off Tây Sơn street. Each session takes only 36 people, so the room feels closer to a group of friends watching together than to a commercial cinema.

   Quán Kỳ Nam is the second feature by director Leon Lê, after Song Lang in 2018. It had its world premiere in the Special Presentations strand of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025 and went on to the Busan International Film Festival. The whole film was shot on 35mm.

   The story is set in Ho Chi Minh City in the 1980s. Khang, a young translator assigned to render The Little Prince into Vietnamese, moves into an empty flat in an old housing block and gets to know his neighbour Kỳ Nam, a widow once well known among home-economics circles who now quietly runs a monthly meal service. An accident stops her from working, Khang offers to help, and the bond between two people from two different worlds deepens against the upheavals of the subsidy era.

   The two leads:
Đỗ Thị Hải Yến as Kỳ Nam, her long-awaited return to the big screen
Liên Bỉnh Phát as Khang, reuniting with Leon Lê after Song Lang

   This one is for viewers who like a slow pace, the grain of celluloid and the texture of post-war Vietnam, and for anyone who has followed Song Lang since 2018 and wants to see where the director went next.

   White Light Cinéhub is a screening space inside COMPLEX 01, a cultural complex rebuilt from an old factory in an alley off Tây Sơn, which runs workshops and screenings through the week. It sits in Đống Đa district, a short ride southwest of the Old Quarter.

   There are two sessions on two consecutive days, each capped at 36 seats, and you register in advance through the organisers' form. The coupon covers one drink and one portion of popcorn. The programme is non-profit and community-oriented rather than commercial.

   The film is in Vietnamese with English subtitles, so you can follow it without any Vietnamese.

   Pick your session, hold a seat, and let the Saigon of forty years ago fill a small room in Hanoi.