Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Bên trong vỏ kén vàng) is a 2023 Vietnamese-language drama film written and directed by Phạm Thiên Ân, in his feature directorial debut. It is a co-production between Vietnam, Singapore, France and Spain.

It had its world premiere in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 24 May 2023, and won the Caméra d'Or, which is awarded for the best first feature film. The film was released in Vietnam on 11 August 2023.

Plot
Thien's sister-in-law Teresa dies in a motorcycle accident in Saigon, although her five-year-old son Dao survives the crash. Thien takes both Dao and his sister-in-law's body to the rural village where he grew up. There, he sees life in the countryside in a series of loosely connected events. A funeral and other Catholic ceremonies are conducted. Thien meets an old man who fought in the Vietnam War, who tells his stories of surviving when so many did not. He goes out hunting with his host and bonds with Dao, and awkwardly reconnects with Thao, a childhood friend he had attempted to form a romantic relationship with when younger, but who has since become a nun. He arranges for Dao to be taken to the school where she works, where most of the students are highlanders.

Thien leaves the village rather than stick around for an event, and begins aimlessly searching for his missing brother Tam, perhaps to learn of his fate, and tell him that the wife he abandoned was dead and his son needed to be cared for. He also learns that his brother had briefly gone to seminary and had considered becoming a priest, before deciding to marry instead. He shows a wedding picture of the two found on Teresa's body in a village he thinks might be related, and talks with people, but the search is ultimately fruitless.

Cast

 * Lê Phong Vũ as Thiện
 * Nguyễn Thịnh as Đạo
 * Nguyễn Thị Trúc Quỳnh as Thảo
 * Vũ Ngọc Mạnh as Trung

Production
The film was produced by Van Thi Tran for JK Film (Vietnam) and Jeremy Chua for Potocol (Singapore), in coproduction with Deuxième Ligne Films (France), Zorba Production (Vietnam) and Fasten Films (Spain).

Pham Thien An's 2019 Cannes short film entry, Stay Awake, Be Ready, which won the Illy Short Film Award in the Directors' Fortnight section, inspired Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.

Answering RFI Vietnamese radio, the "cocoon shell" is said by director Pham Thien An to be a metaphor or symbol for people trapped chasing after fame or fortune and to escape the "shell" requires some soul-searching revolving around the question of 'What to live for'.

Release
The film was selected to be screened in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 76th Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 24 May 2023. It was also invited at the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 'A Window on Asian Cinema' section and will be screened in October 2023.

World sales are handled by Cercamon. The film was theatrically released in Vietnam by CJ CGV on 11 August 2023. Nour Films distributed the film in France on 20 September 2023, under the title L'Arbre aux papillons d'or. The film was given a limited release in the US by Kino Lorber starting on 19 January 2024.

Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Following its own alluringly inscrutable path between past, present, reality, and dreams, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell rewards patient viewers with an absorbing spiritual odyssey." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 94 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Guy Lodge of Variety called it, "Challenging but seductive art cinema that invites comparisons to such titans as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang and even Theo Angelopoulos, without feeling derivative of any." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded the movie five stars out of five, describing it as a "jewel of slow cinema (that) is a wondrous meditation on faith and death."