Head of the Cinematography Department Vi Kiến Thành.

The 7th Hà Nội International Film Festival (HANIFF) will take place from November 7 to 11 featuring 117 films from 51 countries and territories. The films will be competing for official awards including honours for short and feature-length films.

Since it was first held in 2010, the biennial HANIFF has grown in popularity, drawing attention from filmmakers and creatives across the world.

Vi Kiến Thành, head of the Cinematography Department under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, spoke about the festival preparations.

Could you tell us about plans for the festival?

HANIFF is a chance for local cinema lovers to enjoy an unforgettable array of cinematic works in Hà Nội. This year, the festival, has a slogan Cinema: Soaring - Creativity, and will be held along with a series of activities aiming at promoting the cinema industry's contribution to the culture industry development of Việt Nam.

The festival is to honor and discover new talents of international and Vietnamese cinema and is a playground for connections, exchange and cooperation, for mutual development and coordination between filmmakers, film distributors and domestic and international film artists.

HANIFF features 117 excellent works from Việt Nam and cinema industries around the world. The screenings have been selected from over 500 films sent to the festival selection panel. The 7th HANIFF continues to honour cinematic works that are creative and rich in human values.

We have worked on the festival preparation for a long time, on things like the film selection, inviting judges for competing film categories and creating a plan for activities within the framework of the festival.

Now we can say that the 7th HANIFF preparation is well done and can promise an event with a series of diverse and attractive activities.

What is the highlight of the festival?

There will be a total of 42 films competing in the short-film feature-length film and Việt Nam contemporary film categories. The only Vietnamese film competing for the best feature-length film is Ngày Xưa Có Một Chuyện Tình (Once Upon a Love Story), and it will be screened at the HANIFF opening ceremony.

Eight other films will vie for the short film award. The Vietnamese contemporary film programme will introduce 33 films including 21 motion pictures, six documentaries and six animations.

The programme will see blockbusters and award-winning films from the 23rd Việt Nam National Film Festival, from the Việt Nam Cinematography Association Award 2024 and shown at the Đà Nẵng - Asian Film Festival.

Besides film screenings, the festival will organise two seminars to introduce German cinema and to discuss historical film and literary adaptation production.

An exhibition to introduce UNESCO heritage sites of Việt Nam will be an interesting event for international artists and filmmakers to see. This is held to promote a tourism cinema programme launched by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Additionally, the other events include film project market, open-air film screenings and a field trip for the festival guests.

The film project market is particularly aimed at young filmmakers. It is an important opportunity for the filmmakers to pitch to investors and this year, there will be eight film projects, including four from Vietnamese filmmakers.

HANIFF is an opportunity to promote our cultural industry development in the cinema field. It is also expected to continue to affirm and elevate the brand as a destination for filmmakers.

A still from 'Bà Già Đi Bụi' (Old Woman Makes off from Home) film. It will be premiered at the 7th HANIFF. Photos baovanhoa.vn

Could you tell about the seminars in detail?

The German Cinema in Focus programme is one of the main events at the festival. It is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relationship between Việt Nam and Germany happening next year.

The seminar on German cinema will be held to share film production experiences of German filmmakers, discuss human-themed topics, German filmmaking trends and other subjects.

At the second seminar, filmmakers will discuss how to adapt literary works to a film script and change the filmmakers' thoughts in making historical film.

How about the festival opening and award ceremonies?

The festival opening and closing are the main events which are being held at downtown Hồ Gươm Theatre. The theatre has modern architecture but still recreates a part of the history of Việt Nam, through traditional patterns representing Vietnamese culture. It was hailed as one of the 'Top 10 Most Outstanding Opera Houses in the World' at the World Travel Awards.

Hopefully, it will make the artists, film crews and audience excited to come to Hồ Gươm Theatre.

The National Cinema Centre will host the film screenings along with other CGV and BHD cinemas. Two cine shows are expected to be held at pedestrian streets to attract an even wider audience, who in addition to coming to watch the film will have a chance to meet the artists. VNS