Dung Dot (in English, Don’t Burn), the film version of doctor-martyr Dang Thuy Tram’s wartime diary, has won the ‘People’s Choice Award’ at a leading festival for Asian films.

Director Dang Nhat Minh receives the award.

This is the second time that a Vietnamese film has taken the only award at the annual Fukuoka (Japan) Film Festival, and the second time this month a Vietnamese film has bagged a major award.

Dung Dot – translated as Yesterday I Dreamt of Peace into Japanese – bested 23 rival entries from sixteen Asian nations. Buoyed by translator Izumi Takahashi’s excellent subtitling, noted director Dang Nhat Minh’s faithful retelling of Tram’s story played to packed theaters each time it was screened at the festival.

“Throughout each showing, viewers, and even members of the organising board burst into tears at scenes reflecting the profound humanity of the film’s modest and courageous heroine,” reports the Vietnam News Agency.

Director Minh and lead actress Minh Huong (Thuy Tram) were on hand to accept the award.

Two years ago, Luu Hynh Luu’s Ao Dai Trang (‘The White Silk Dress’) took the Fukuoka festival prize. Two weeks ago, another Vietnamese film, Choi Voi (‘Adrift’), won the critic’s prize at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.

Dung Dot was released in Vietnam on April 30. It tells the story of an idealistic young doctor who was just 27 when she was shot dead by US forces in Quang Ngai province in Vietnam’s south in 1970.

Dang Thuy Tram’s diary was recovered and kept for over 35 years by a US soldier before it was returned to Vietnam in 2005. The diary offers a human face to a war that is rarely talked about by those who lived through it. It became a hit amongst a younger generation who had learned little more than the bare facts of the war in class.

Dung Dot was financed by the government at a cost of 12 billion Vietnamese dong ($674,000). Vehicles, weapons and uniforms were supplied by the Ministry of Defence.

VietNamNet /VNE/VNA/Tuoi Tre