Hair, Paper, Water…

Winner of the ‘Filmmakers of the Present’ award at Locarno, Nicolas Graux and Trương Minh Quý’s second collaboration is a delicate portrait of cultural loss and resilience, seen through the eyes of one of Vietnam’s smallest ethnic groups. Loosely structured around a vocabulary lesson in Rục, Hair, Paper, Water… follows no-nonsense matriarch Cao Thị Hậu — one of the last remaining members of the Rục people — as she tends to her grandchildren. Tracking her from her village to Saigon and back to the caves where she was born, the film quietly catalogs her language and medicinal practices as she passes them down to a generation growing up under the pressures of modernization and education. Shot on a vintage Bolex, Graux and Trương’s agile camera drifts through rich textures and sounds, forming a gentle elegy for a world Cao strives to keep alive.