Vietnamese Director Duong Dieu Linh’s ‘Don’t Cry, Butterfly’ Scores Top Venice Critics’ Week Prize

Vietnamese Director Duong Dieu Linh’s horror-comedy “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” is the big winner of the Venice Critics’ Week where it scooped the grand prize and the award for most innovative feature.

Written and directed by Duong Dieu Linh, the Hanoi-set film follows a housewife who uses voodoo to try and get her cheating husband to fall back into love with her. Instead, she invites a mysterious presence into the house.

“Don’t Cry, Butterfly,” which is being sold by Barunson E&A, marks the directorial debut of Duong Dieu Linh. It’s also a companion piece to her award-winning short film series about middle-aged women that includes “A Trip to Heaven,” “Sweet, Salty” and “Mother, Daughter, Dreams.” Just like the shorts, “Butterfly” explores recurring themes of womanhood, family relations and cultural traditions, and is told through a quirky sense of humor and use of magical realism.

The main jury – comprising producer Kerem Ayan, director Yasmine Benkiran, and actor and director Ariane Labed – praised “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” for its “singularity and creativity, because it experiments with new ideas, mixing comedy, social drama and fantasy,” and “for the way it represents the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship,” according to a statement.

“Don’t Cry, Butterfly” also won the section’s award for most innovative feature award, assigned by a five-person jury of people under the age of 35.

The section’s main jury awarded a special mention to Alexandra Simpson’s U.S.-Switzerland co-prod “No Sleep Till,” a dreamy, visually striking look at locals in a small Florida beach town under the threat of a hurricane. The jury praised “No Sleep Till” “for the contemporaneity of the topic and the stunning photography, for the tender gaze on its beautiful characters, for its powerful, melancholic and vibrating atmosphere,” the statement said.

Italy-based Iranian director Milad Tangshir’s “Anywhere Anytime” scored the prize for best indie production. The film riffs off Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic “Bicycle Thieves,” albeit in a contemporary setting.

British-French filmmaker Jethro Massey’s debut “Paul & Paulette Take A Bath,” a rom-com about a young American photographer and a French girl with a taste for the macabre who embark on a morbid road trip, won the section’s audience award, with an average score of 4.5/5.

Other Venice Critics’ Week winners include U.S. journalist and filmmaker Michael Premo’s doc “Homegrown,” about group of Donald Trump supporters from the 2020 campaign trail all the way to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Homegrown” took the best technical contribution prize.