North American Premiere
Fresh off the Locarno Film Festival, Bảo Lê makes his North American VIFF entrance with this lush, meticulously composed feature debut that unfolds as a series of film tableaux, drawing on moments in the life of a middle-aged mechanic whose work involves installing decibel meters across public spaces. At home, he anticipates the deafening silence of his mother’s passing.
Blending audio parameters into its narrative, Hearing rides the ebbs and flows of characters’ daily rhythms, using soundscape as an emotional regulator — from village raves to moments of quiet stillness in the beautiful Vietnamese forests. Scenes glide into each other like visual poems, revealing themselves through sequences of measured exchanges, all speaking to deeper existential truths. Within each frame is a world sensory abundance and meditation on presence. This is slow cinema at its finest register.
Oct 3 & 4: Filmmaker Q&A
Media Partner
Community Partner
Tuấn Quốc Nsưt Nguyễn, Tản Ngọc Nsưt, Huyền Khánh, Quyên Tiểu, Hùng Minh, Uẩn Công Nguyễn
Vietnam/Singapore/
Norway/France/
Indonesia/Saudi Arabia/
Cambodia/Thailand/Taiwan
2026
In Vietnamese with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Dũng Anh Trần, Oanh Thị Kim Nguyễn, Hoan Trinh Nguyễn, Chartchai Ketnust, Julien Lacorne
Producer
Elizabeth Wijaya, Weijie Lai, Yến Huỳnh
Screenwriter
Bảo Lê
Cinematography
Phúc Vinh Nguyễn
Editor
Carlo Francisco Manatad, Dounia Sichov
Production Design
Thanh Văn Lê
Original Music
Mental Overdrive
Bảo Lê
Lê Bảo’s interest in cinema began when he was a little boy looking through the small window of his house that sits by a river in Saigon. In his youth, he watched foreign films on his computer, and he trained himself to be a filmmaker using a borrowed camera to make his first short film. His debut feature, Taste (2021), was shot with non-professional actors in the places he has known all his life. Hearing (2026) is his ode to the people and places he loves.
Filmography: Taste (2021); Hearing (2026)
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