Othered (The)

Directed by: Ham Tran
Country: Vietnam, USA
Genre: Horror, Fantasy, Suspense

Presentation

Synopsis

Vietnam, 1500s. A family of three women (diligent Daughter, naive Sister, and intimidating Mother) is on the run from a war that is ravaging their home. After days on the sea, they find shelter on a secluded island. Daughter is alienated by Mother who blatantly favors Sister. One day, she makes friends with a mysterious figure claiming to be Buddha and bestows her with gifts for her woes. Day by day, the women are haunted by supernatural events and visions from the past as supplies dwindle. Are their spiraling circumstances an accumulation of repressed emotions and unspoken secrets, or are they under the whims of a mischievous ancient entity who is inflicting chaos into their lives? A gothic reimagining of the Vietnamese fairy tale Tấm and Cám, Vietnam’s CINDERELLA story.

Director’s vision

The Othered is a deep psychological study of the trauma of a war survivor – not the kind fought on a battlefield, but in the mind of a teenager
in the crisis of finding her own identity, sexual, familial, and mental. Only here, that inner shadow is not metaphorical, it is physical and it is
terrifying. Although there are only 4 characters in the film: Daughter, Sister, Mother, the ancestral entity, the 5th character is the Island itself.

Budget

Director’s biography

Ham Tran’s first feature, JOURNEY FROM THE FALL, premiered at the 2005 Busan Film Festival. He relocated to Vietnam in 2012, where he directed six feature films ranging from horror (HOLLOW, 2014) and heist (BITCOIN HEIST, 2017). In 2022, Tran’s MAIKA world premiered at Sundance. He has also recently completed a short film called POWDER, which is part of a horror shorts anthology that he has developed called ZERO HOUR: RED THREAD. His other upcoming projects include a horror feature based on the retelling of the Vietnamese Cinderella story called, THE OTHERED.

Production

Production Company: EAST FILMS
Mail:

info@east-films.com

Video presentation