When the Tenth Month Comes

Considered by many local and international critics to be the greatest Vietnamese movie ever made. In the final days of the war, a beautiful young widow, Duyen, faces a daily struggle to take care of her young son and ailing father-in-law, all the while hiding from them the fact that her husband has recently been killed in battle. Keeping her secret burden to herself, she is befriended by the village schoolmaster, Zhang, who agrees to fabricate letters from her dead husband in order to spare her family sorrow. As their friendship deepens, Duyen and Zhang find themselves drawn closer to intimacy – a dangerous relationship if Duyen if to maintain her charade. The film resonates beautifully with the traditional Vietnamese precepts of duty and sacrifice, combined with aesthetic influences from centuries of tradional poetry, literature and theatre.