Bold with young stars
The 2025 Vietnamese Tet film season is becoming more and more exciting as it witnesses the return of famous filmmakers such as: Tran Thanh, Thu Trang, Nguyen Quang Dung.
They are all stars who have had works that have surpassed the hundred billion mark on the Vietnamese big screen. Most notably, Tran Thanh - who has won big several times when releasing his films during Tet.
Up to now, 3 Vietnamese Tet 2025 films have been revealed: "Love by mistake, best friend", "The Four Guardians", "The Billionaire Kiss". The interesting thing is that this year, the crews all invited young stars and focused on the young audience segment - those who account for the majority of the market share in theaters during Tet.
On December 12, producer and director Tran Thanh released a poster introducing the main cast of the film. In it, the male lead Quoc Anh wears a smart suit, standing between two famous beauty queens, Tieu Vy and Ky Duyen. Many viewers predict that the main content of “The Four Guardians” will likely revolve around a love triangle - a familiar theme in Vietnamese cinema.
This love triangle also appears in Thu Trang’s work “The Billion Dollar Kiss”. However, unlike Tran Thanh, the female director chose to exploit the story of “two guys, one girl” including Miss Thien An, Le Xuan Tien and Ma Ran Do.
Director Nguyen Quang Dung's film - "Love by mistake for a best friend" also tells the story of a dramatic love triangle between Thanh Son (as Vu Tran), Kaity Nguyen (as Binh An) and Tran Ngoc Vang (as Bao Toan). Remake of the original hit Thai Friendzone, "Love by mistake for a best friend" is expected to bring a "new breeze" with a familiar story about love and friendship.
It can be seen that all 3 filmmakers used new faces, even those without much acting experience such as Ky Duyen, Thien An... in their projects.
This is a fairly new direction for this year's Tet film season, different from previous Tet film seasons that focused on veteran stars with ticket-selling names.
Talking about the decision to use a cast of all young stars, director Thu Trang shared with Lao Dong Newspaper that it was a bold decision of hers. The female director said that she could invite veteran and famous stars to participate. However, because the film's content is aimed at young people, she needed newer faces.
Focus on positive, youthful messages
With the 3 Tet film projects mentioned above, the filmmakers, in addition to bringing laughter during Tet, also want to convey the message about young people's love, aspirations in love, career, and self-affirmation. This is also the dream that young people want in their current life.
Tet films focus on exploiting the theme of young people to attract this audience segment to the cinema. In previous years, films about young people and families have won quite a lot. However, one point to note is that the audience segment of Tet films is not only young people, couples in love, but also middle-aged and older audiences. Filmmakers also need to pay attention to these audience segments to allocate time and content appropriately.
As for Tran Thanh's films, he is clearly doing quite well in this regard, combining young stars like Tieu Vy and Ky Duyen with experienced actors like Le Giang.
From the above, it can be seen that the Tet film race this year is quite fierce when directors all choose films with quite similar themes. This leads to a lack of diversity in topics, but it is also a way for audiences to filter and choose suitable films to enjoy.
