
The Tree House. 2019. Vietnam. Directed by Truong Minh Quý. DCP. 84 min.
In the year 2045, a filmmaker on Mars tries to remember: What was home? As he speaks to his father millions of miles away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the present becomes past and the past is excavated in the present moment. Telling the stories of the Ruc and Kor people of Vietnam, whose cave homes and tree houses were destroyed by American forces during the Vietnam War, Quý probes questions of displacement and how space holds ancestral memory. Life on Mars is never captured on camera, and we come to know the Highlands through 16mm documentary footage captured by Quý and cinematographer Son Doan, alongside American military films captured during the war.