Skip to main content
We Were the Scenery film image; close on a VHS tape with a faded label

We Were the Scenery

Canadian Premiere

Hoa Thị Lê and Huệ Nguyên Chế recall their experience of working as extras on Apocalypse Now after fleeing Vietnam in 1975.

Director
Featuring

Hoa Thị Lê Chế, Huệ Nguyên Chế

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2025

Language

In Vietnamese with English subtitles

18+
15 min
Art, Music & Photography Award Winners Documentary Family Relations Human Rights & Social Justice Legendary Filmmakers Shorts Talent to Watch

Credits & Director

Executive Producer

Su Kim

Producer

Cathy Linh Che, Jess X. Snow

Screenwriter

Cathy Linh Che

Cinematography

Jess X. Snow

Editor

Christopher Radcliff

Original Music

Eliot Leigh

Christopher Radcliff headshot

Christopher Radcliff

Christopher Radcliff is an award-winning filmmaker whose work has screened at festivals worldwide and online via Criterion, Short of the Week, and Lé Cinema Club. His latest film We Were the Scenery received the Short Film Jury Award for Nonfiction at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre

I Am the Blues

Dir. Daniel Cross
106 min

A musical journey through the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou, the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta and Moonshine soaked BBQs in the North Mississippi Hill Country. Plus: Visits with the last original blues devils!

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Palestine '36

Dir. Annemarie Jacir
118 min

An epic historical drama from director Annemarie Jacir that follows an ensemble of rural villagers who face off against British colonial forces during the 1936 Palestinian revolt.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Happy Together

Dir. Wong Kar-Wai
96 min

Buenos Aires, the end of the world, 1997. Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung are lovers trying to hash out their on-off relationship in an alien environment.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

The Lives of Others

Dir. Florian Henkel von Donnesmarck
137 min

This month's Talking Pictures film is a masterly Cold War thriller set in East Berlin. An agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives...

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other

Dir. Manon Ouimet & Jacob Perlmutter
100 min

This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of two artists, husband and wife, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.

Image: © Manon et Jacob and Final Cut For Real

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story

Dir. Sinéad O'Shea
99 min

Judging by this candid, funny, passionate biographical documentary, it would have been a wild ride to have been Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, or even to have been in her circle of friends and lovers. Well, for an hour and a half we can pretend we were.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre