Director Nguyen Thi Tham: "The film about women's football is told in a... gentle way"

The Movie of Firsts

Exactly 10 years since the highly acclaimed documentary “The Last Journey of Ms. Phung”, what brought you to the opportunity to make this special film about the “first times” of the Vietnamese women's team?

- I consider this my “fateful” film because I had previously refused it many times for many reasons. Firstly, sports in general and especially football (men’s or women’s) have never been my “favorite dish”. I have almost never watched a football match and my knowledge of football is mostly in the form of “hearing about it”. I am not enthusiastic enough to accept making a film in a field that I am not good at.

Secondly, in order to make this documentary, which is scheduled for theatrical release, I had to adhere to the strict schedule of the Vietnamese women's team on their journey to the World Cup, as well as the producer's requirements for the release schedule. That did not suit my free-spirited nature or the leisurely working style of an independent filmmaker.

However, the producer's will was that the director of the film must be a female director and perhaps they were impressed by the way I threw myself into pursuing the film project "The Last Journey of Ms. Phung" - an independent documentary that I had spent 5 years pursuing and had gone through difficult financial times to make ends meet. I myself did not expect that, when I delved into the survey and built the script line (with two other colleagues) from the end of 2022, especially when I got to go down to the field with the players to do the first filming sets (early May 2023, when the women's team competed at the 2023 SEA Games in Cambodia), I was truly drawn into the dramatic and beautiful journey of the Vietnamese female warriors on their journey to reach the World Cup.

How to capture the 30-year history of Vietnamese women's football development in just 80 minutes of film?

- That is really a difficult problem. Post-processing this "huge" source of material is a terribly time-consuming process. Up to now, Vietnamese women's football has gone through three generations. To reach the memorable milestone: The Vietnamese women's team set foot in the most prestigious arena in the world, the World Cup, for the first time, there were countless contributions from previous generations.

Within the limited framework of the film, we had to skip over the middle generation, leaving room for the first generation - those who laid the foundation for Vietnamese women's football since the days of "street football", and especially the third generation - the female players with strong will and talent who, together with coach Mai Duc Chung, created miracles: winning a ticket to the World Cup for the first time and the first time the Vietnamese National Anthem was played in the most prestigious arena in the world.

"Fall and laugh, injury and laugh"

In the necessary silences of the film, is there any silence reserved for the sad moments of the female players, about the losses they have to endure, when they are more or less "discriminated" against men's football?

- Right from the moment I started writing this script, I decided to put aside the male/female factor here because my point of view is that there is no gender in a profession. Once you choose, you have to give it your all, no matter what profession, no matter what gender, there should be no distinction. Until I met the female players and talked to them directly, I absolutely did not hear them mention that. I do not know if they have those implicit comparisons or not, or maybe sometimes they also have moments of sadness, but above all, there is the innocent and pure inner beauty of the female players, so that no comparison can make them lose their passion and will.

What never ceases to amaze me when I capture their lovely images, both in competition and in real life, is the almost constant smile on their faces. They smile when they fall, when they get injured, when they lose. The carefree, innocent smiles that we see less and less in this life full of worries and calculations.

What words from the female players made you "freeze"?

- When I asked the female players about the main motivation that led them to victory, almost all of them mentioned family, and then the Fatherland. They talked about those small and big things in very simple and rustic words. Glory or bitterness cannot destroy the innocent nature of girls who came from poverty and were tempered through countless challenges.

Recalling a memorable moment at the 30th Sea Games in the match against Thailand, midfielder Chuong Thi Kieu talked about the injury she suffered: “...It was the referee who told me to come out, otherwise I wouldn’t have come out. When you’re playing, who knows what pain is! Thailand is strong, if I came out, I would be short-handed, there was no one else inside... When I got back to the hotel, I opened the bandage and looked at the wound, and I was horrified, oh my god, it was terrible...”.

Defender Hoang Thi Loan also shouted with determination with her teammates when they reached the big sea: "The arena is big, my body is small but my spirit is very big, and I am not afraid of anyone". Failure has never made striker Huynh Nhu falter: "I can lose 10 matches but I will still continue playing because who knows, maybe one day I will win"...

More than words, these are truly girls of steel!

Stories from the locker room

How can we tell a compelling and surprising film when stories about women's football, especially on the journey to the World Cup, have been closely followed and reported by the press for so long?

- The most important thing about a film is the emotions it brings to the audience. With its own genre characteristics, a film obviously has many more advantages than an article or a short report on television in its storytelling. One of the biggest regrets for the film crew is that we ultimately did not get a visa to New Zealand in July 2023 to directly capture on camera the most memorable images and moments of Vietnamese women's football in their first World Cup. Especially for a director who specializes in live documentaries like me, that is even more regrettable.

But it was also because of that “necessity is the mother of invention” that we poured all our heart and emotion into the conversations that took place right in the women’s team’s locker room, where they shared more openly and honestly than ever the “first-time” stories about what they had been through, many of which could be said to be beyond our imagination; about matches without spectators, “there were no seats but there were plenty of reclining chairs” - as striker Luu Ngoc Mai said; about a carefree and vague look of a young female player on the bus carrying the team from the hotel to the training ground in Germany that I don’t know why I was especially haunted by...

As a girl who experienced many difficulties when entering life, having gone through the years of "nomadic farming" when following my parents to work at construction sites, I somehow found it easier to sympathize when talking to girls who also came from poor backgrounds, like me...

At the time the film was in post-production, the wedding between midfielder Tran Thi Thu and her longtime girlfriend took place and was made public to the media, replacing the previous gossip about the hidden aspects of gender in some female players. For a commercial film, will that hidden aspect be mentioned?

- The film absolutely does not mention that story, although I was invited by the center-back Tran Thi Thu to attend the wedding and sent to see the couple's beautiful wedding photo album. Obviously, that would be a "customer-attracting" element from a common perspective. But I refused to put that story in the film, not because I avoided it and considered it a sensitive hidden corner, but because the story itself about the 30-year history of Vietnamese women's football, especially their dramatic and emotional journey to the World Cup, is more than enough for the inherent appeal of a film.

Also because of the absolute respect for its characters, the film refuses to shoot from above and only shoots horizontally or diagonally upwards. Naturally, I always have the instinct to cherish the image of women in my films. The more hardship they endure, the more I want to cherish them, from Ms. Phung who spent her life wandering with a traveling theater troupe to the golden girls who reached the World Cup arena. Not necessarily romanticizing it, but I always want to choose the gentlest way possible to tell about women who have to go through hardships like them.

What significant changes in the storytelling for this first film, compared to “The Last Journey of Ms. Phung”?

- The gap of 10 years has indeed filled in many shortcomings in an independent filmmaker like me compared to the time of making my first film, as well as somewhat changed the reception of the general audience on the big screen. The most obvious change here is the acceleration of the film's pace to match the dramatic story and especially the accompaniment of music, the resonance of sound... to match the taste of today's young audiences. In general, there are very significant differences in the way of filming, editing, music making... This is also the first time I have worked with a crew that has never made a documentary before, all of them are very young, everyone tried to grasp the idea very quickly and patiently went through one edit after another until the day the film was submitted for approval.

So what gift did the film crew give the female players on Vietnamese Women's Day?

- Heroic and funny footage!