Vietnam Animation Studio

A young girl searches for her father, a soldier in the PAVN, after her mother and sister are killed during Christmas Bombings.

A story of a water puppet performer.

A story about a kid wanting to be the god of heavens (so that he could skip classes and play around all day), Flying Dream’s witticism is equally applicable to situations in the world of adults. The second directorial work of Hữu Đức (who had by then appeared in a number of early Vietnamese animation project, often responsible for the art), Flying Dream marked ‘the maturity phase’ of Vietnamese animation in general and doll-based stop-motion works in particular. Flying Dream also bears the spirit of 1970s Eastern European animation through hazy spaces and colours floating freely between reality and a dream-world (created by artist Mai Long), and a score that recalls the best of psychedelic pop music of the time.

A schoolboy dreaming of building a giant crane and a sturdy dam finds himself inspired by the legend of The Mountain God and The Lord of the Waters. His reimagination sets it up for the future, where science and technology will enable a post-war Vietnam to conquer nature and move forward.