On Sofa #7: Screening and Q&A with Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang and Linh-Dan Pham

   Three short films in one evening, then a conversation with the two people who made them — in a library in Đống Đa, on sofas, with exactly 20 seats. This is the kind of screening you do not simply watch and leave: the best part starts when the lights come up.

   The programme opens with “Accidents & Emergencies” (Nos Urgences), Linh-Dan Pham's first short (2023, 14 min): Thu, her brother Christophe and his fiancée Sophie meet in an emergency room after their grandmother has a fall, and while they wait for the diagnosis, the tensions simmering in the family surface. Two films by Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang follow: “Một Cuộc Thẩm Vấn” (2011, 15 min), in which a Vietnamese woman is interrogated about her marriage in order to obtain a French residence permit, and the line between what is true and what is told grows thin; and “Đi Cổng Trời” (2024, 16 min 20), in which a mother and her child travel to Heaven's Gate after the father's death — she looking for one last meeting with her husband, the child facing an abyss of their own.

   The programme
— “Accidents & Emergencies (Nos Urgences)” — Linh-Dan Pham, 2023, 14 min
— “Một Cuộc Thẩm Vấn” — Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang, 2011, 15 min
— “Đi Cổng Trời” — Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang, 2024, 16 min 20
— An online conversation with both directors after the screening

   About Linh-Dan Pham: she entered cinema in Régis Wargnier's “Indochine” as Camille, the adopted daughter of the character played by Catherine Deneuve, and was nominated for a César as Most Promising Actress. After that start she left the screen for ten years to study, moving to New York for the Actors Studio method at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. Back in France she appeared in Frédéric Balekdjian's “Les Mauvais Joueurs” and Jacques Audiard's “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” — and for “Les Mauvais Joueurs” she won the César for Most Promising Actress, thirteen years after her first nomination in that same category.

   It is for people who follow short films, for film students, and for anyone who wants to ask a director directly why a scene stops where it stops. The room is small, so your question will almost certainly be heard.

   The films are shown with English subtitles; the conversation with the directors is held in Vietnamese. Seats are capped at 20 and require registration through the organisers' form.

   You can watch a film anywhere. Asking the people who made it happens tonight only. What would you ask?