Experimental film festival «Saigon Experimental VI»

   Two evenings, 20+ experimental shorts from Vietnam, Europe, East Asia and Latin America, and an hour of conversation with filmmakers after each screening. Admission is free, registration is not optional. The platform was started in Ho Chi Minh City back in 2019 and returns this month to a room in Tân Bình.

   Saigon Experimental is dedicated to moving-image practice. Each edition selects around 25 films from an open call and works with artists, curators and institutions internationally. All films carry Vietnamese and English subtitles, each day brings a different selection, and the audience votes for the Saigon Experimental Audience Award, which carries a cash prize for the winning filmmaker.

   Some of what is on:

   Lê Ngọc Duy — «The House That Stays», a hybrid autobiographical short that rebuilds a childhood home, with the director's mother's voice in the cast
Hoàng Hà — «Wet Wood», Vietnam
Dina Mimi — «Thousand Thrashing Arms», Palestine
Zhu Xiang-Pu — «NoNameBlade», Taiwan
Kawazoe Aya — «Howling», Japan, the longest film in the programme
Huỳnh-Thái Thuỵ — «Thiếu, Nữ», a Vietnamese trans woman's final letter to her pre-transition body
María Bilbao Herrera — «Nomadism, temporal connection and new feminine longings», Venezuela and Spain

   Lê Ngọc Duy, born in Da Nang in 2000, premiered his short «Before the Sea Forgets» at the 2025 Cannes Directors' Fortnight, where it was nominated for the Queer Palm. He holds a Prince Claus Fund Seed Award and attended the 2025 Locarno Filmmakers Academy.

   Two post-screening talks:

• — «In Focus but Out of Frame» — Vietnamese filmmakers in conversation, with Lê Ngọc Duy, Bách Xuân Phương and Hoàng Hà
• — «Animating the Moving Image» — curator Huế Nguyễn and artist-programmer Linh San revisit experimental Vietnamese animation from the 1950s onward. Conducted in Vietnamese with English translation available

   This is for viewers already comfortable with non-linear cinematic language, and for anyone who wants to see what young filmmakers across the region are testing right now. The organisers note the programme is not suitable for children or young viewers.

   Snacks and drinks are on site, but because the first night runs late you are welcome to bring your own food and drink.

   The events are supported by the Purin Film Fund, the Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam and the Goethe-Institut Ho Chi Minh City, under the patronage of the German Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City.

   Two nights are enough to see where experimental cinema in Southeast Asia currently stands.