A father writes down his life’s story for his daughter. She answers by turning it into cinema. In Ba’s Book, Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Ashley Duong takes her father’s memoir to Vietnam and brings it to life alongside her family. His letters span the Vietnam War and Iranian Revolution, but the film is not only about reflections; it’s also about the impact those memories have on the people who inherit them.
Shifting between documentary and staged drama, Ba’s Book treats the past as something that lives on in the room. Scenes are performed, interrupted, questioned, and reshaped as the family decides how much of their history it’s ready to face together. Duong looks at how war and displacement can leave divisions that outlast the events themselves, and how filmmaking can become a way to move through them. A TIFF Docs world premiere and winner of the Documentary Magazine Award at Cannes Docs, Ba’s Book brings a daughter, a father, and a family back inside the story that made them.
Content Considerations: Mature themes, mentions of war, police violence
Oct 4 & 5: Filmmaker Q&A
Presented by
Media Partner
Anh Duong, Ashley Duong, Kim Anh Dao, Bảy Thị Nguyễn, Hạnh Thị Dương, Tuấn Văn Dương
Canada
2026
In English and Vietnamese with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Ina Fichman, Ashley Duong
Screenwriter
Ashley Duong
Cinematography
Mrinal Desai
Editor
Anouk Deschênes, Ashley Duong
Production Design
Gillian Nasser
Original Music
Peter Venne
Ashley Duong
Ashley Da-Lê Duong is a Tiohtià:ke/Montréal-based filmmaker with over a decade of experience crafting hybrid and documentary cinema. Her directorial debut, A Time to Swim (2018), won the Special Jury Prize at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. In 2023, she directed Space Explorers: Moonrise on the ISS (2023), the largest production ever filmed in space, which required distilling a film from over 300 hours of footage captured aboard the International Space Station. Her latest project is Ba’s Book, winner of the Documentary Magazine Award at Cannes Docs.
Filmography: A Time to Swim (2017)
Photo by Lesya Nakoneczny
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
American Doctor
One of the most powerful documentaries of the year, this puts us smack in the open wound that is Gaza, filtered through the eyes of three American surgeons (of Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian backgrounds) compelled to do their utmost to alleviate harm.
The History of Concrete
After attending a workshop on pitching saccharine Hallmark movies, John Wilson tries to apply all the same best practices to his documentary about concrete. Frequently absurd and endlessly entertaining detours, asides, and digressions ensue.
La Bola Negra
A big, old-school historical melodrama gets a thrillingly modern, queer makeover from Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who artfully juggle three gay protagonists across stories set in 1932, 1937, and 2017. Winner: Best Director, Cannes. Screening on 35mm.
A. Rimbaud
Patrick Wang (The Bread Factory) presents the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in this staggeringly adventurous and deeply considered movie, a three-hour, one-man show quite unlike anything we have seen before. "Poetic, audacious and singular."
The 39 Steps
In our new film studies series, FRAMEWORK, film scholar Michael van den Bos explores the work of Alfred Hitchcock, across four monochrome masterworks. This week: The 39 Steps (1935), a witty and fast-moving spy thriller from Hitchcock's English period.