On October 23, a representative of the Vietnam Cinema Association shared that this year's Kite Awards may not have bonuses due to problems with procedures and regulations. The fact that the Canh Dieu Award is facing the risk of no prize has raised questions about the scale of the award organization and the excitement of film crews and producers registering to compete in the upcoming award.
The Canh Dieu Award is one of two rare craftsman awards for Vietnamese film genres.
In 2002, the Vietnam Film Association launched a design and design contest for annual awards for Vietnamese films in many genres. In 2003, the Vietnam Film Association named its award the Golden Kite Award, later known as the Kite Award - with a symbolic image of the kite as an expectation of the skyrocketing, breakthrough, and sublimation of Vietnamese films.
Unlike the Golden Lotus Award ( granted by the Department of Cinema) given periodically at National Film Festivals, the Canh Dieu Award is awarded annually in the following categories: Short films, animated films, Documentaries, Scientific films, theoretical critical research works... and the two categories that the public is most interested in are the awards for television series and feature films.
Many famous films have been honored with the highest awards of the Golden Kite Awards such as: The Rain of the Sky, the Story of Pao, Long Thanh holding a fairy tale, the Scent of the burning Grass, the Heroic Prophecy, the Dieule... Like many awards in other art fields, the Kite Awards have always been embroiled in countless controversies about the way of awarding awards, organizing awards... in which, the theme of "bonus" and organization costs have "adhered" to the Kite Awards for many years.
The Kite Award of the Vietnam Cinema Association is organized from the State budget. With the allocated budget, the organizing committee has repeatedly talked about the "smallness" and "lightness", so it is very difficult to organize a large-scale and grand award ceremony.
In 2014, sharing at a press conference about the new season, the Chairman of the Vietnam Cinema Association at that time, Mr. Dang Xuan Hai, said: "The State has given us a budget of 600 million VND to organize the awards ceremony. The rental fee for the award ceremony at the Vietnam-Soviet Friendship Cultural Palace alone has reached nearly 500 million VND".
At that time, the total prize money awarded to artists in all film genres, all award categories was about 450-500 million VND. In which, each film category has at least ten award categories, the most of which are the two categories of Television Feature Film and Cinema Feature Film. For feature films and films, the awards categories are divided into many categories such as filming, screenwriting, acting, director, sound...
When the budget is tight, there will be many "suffering" for the organizing committee. For example, when there is an equal award, 2 films won Best Film, 4 films won the Golden Kite Award... the prize money will of course have to be divided into small amounts.
In addition to the budget for awards nights and bonuses, the organizing committee of the Kite Awards also "struggles" with travel and accommodation costs for film crews from distant provinces and cities.
If the award ceremony takes place in Hanoi, the organizing committee will have to "run" to ask for sponsorship to arrange airfares and accommodation for film crews and artists from Ho Chi Minh City.
The Canh Dieu Award Ceremony has been criticized for many years as... unfinished, lacking the necessary grandness for a ceremony to honor outstanding films and artists. Meritorious Artist Do Thanh Hai, who was once the director of the Golden Kite Awards, when compared to Oscar's "terrifyingly magnificent" level, said: "If you know the amount of funding we are provided to organize an awards ceremony, you will not compare it with Oscar anymore".
The Kite Award of the Vietnam Cinema Association has long been considered the main "encouragement and cheering" award, so that artists can nurture their passion and motivation to work. But this season, when there is no "encouragement" money, it is difficult to imagine the awards ceremony of the 2026 Canh Dieu season.
