PHUONG THAO TRAN

VIETNAM | 2016 | 18’

La and Tuong, indigenous Tai women from a mountainous area in northwest Vietnam, are living with HIV. The film tells their stories - from the brink of death after being infected by their drug-addicted husbands, to their blossoming as strong, independent women, able to support their families. “I met La, one of the main female characters, a few years ago when I was making another film in the area. Through her I learned about the Sunflower support group who feature in “Up the Hills, Down the Valley”. I was amazed by the courage, beauty and strength of the women in the group and knew straight away that they would be an appealing and profound subject for a film. In 2015 I met the film’s producer, Gigi Berardi, who was in the country to research a film about indigenous women living with HIV in Vietnam, and we decided to join forces to tell their tragic, but ultimately uplifting, story. With this documentary, we hope to pay tribute to their bravery and resilience.”

Phuong Thao Tran was born in 1977 in Vietnam. She studied in Hanoi before moving to France where, in 2004, she received her master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from the University of Poitiers. She then debuted with the documentary Rêves d’ouvrières, which received the Yolande et Pierre Perrault Prix at Cinéma du réel in Paris in 2007.

Gigi Berardi is an Italian born documentary Producer/Director from Milan, based in Bangkok. Graduated in 2005 in Films & Video at the University of the Arts in London, in recent years he has produced several short form documentaries, which have been screened at over a hundred festivals globally. Among them Simply Rob and Unravel have won over 25 festival awards. In 2012 Gigi was selected for Discovery Documentary Campus where he developed the story “Love Me or Fear Me” a feature doc about men fighting misogyny in India.In 2013 Gigi received his first broadcasting commission from Al Jazeera to direct an episode of “Witness”, another story set in the Burmese jungle. In 2014 Gigi was commissioned by Minority Rights Group to produce "Up the Hills; Down the Valley" a documentary about the spread of HIV among the ethnic minority women in northern Vietnam. The film was a co-production with VTC (Vietnam Television Corporation). Last year Gigi has completed "Rachel’s HIV Revolution", another Al Jazeera Witness shot in Burkina Faso and broadcasted in July 2016. Since 2011, Gigi has been nurturing Karen Land his feature documentary debut.