This year’s festival will open with a screening of the Vietnamese film named Sa Huynh Relic of director Phung Ngoc Tu.

At a press conference in Hanoi on June 7, according to People’s Artist Nguyen Nhu Vu, who is Acting Director General National Documentary and Scientific Film Studio (NDSFS), this year’s festival will present over 30 documentary films from Vietnam as well as featuring work from ten European countries, including Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and Wallonia-Brussels (Belgium).
In addition, this year’s festival will present not only films of the NDSFS but also from Vietnam Television and some independent authors. The selected documentaries, which have won many acclaimed awards at various international film festivals, reflect real life categories such as culture, society, economy and the environment.
The films will be shown, free of charge, from June 9 to 18 at the NDSFS building at 465 Hoang Hoa Tham Street, Ba Dinh district, Hanoi and at Hoa Sen University at 8 Nguyen Van Trang Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Each free screening will include one documentary film from Vietnam and one from another nation (with Vietnamese subtitles).
This year’s festival will open with a screening of the Vietnamese film named Sa Huynh Relic of director Phung Ngoc Tu and a French film named Once upon a forest of director Luc Jacquet. Sa Huynh Relic - which was awarded Golden Kite Award 2015, deciphers the mysteries of the Sa Huynh Culture which dates back about 3.000 years in Central Vietnam.
Meanwhile, Once upon a forest - which received a César Award nomination for Best Documentary in 2014, offers a unique voyage into a completely untamed universe, a world of perfect balance in which each living thing – from the smallest to largest – plays an essential role.
As part of the festival, a two-day training course on documentary filmmaking is expected to take place in Hanoi from June 12 to 13, with the participation of Belgium director Thierry Michel, who is the director of the film ‘The man who mends women, the wrath of Hippocrates’.
The festival is expected to provide an environment in which documentary lovers can meet and exchange filmmaking skills while enjoying a variety of films from different cultures.