Phantom Ride (2024)

Background

Shot in 2023 in the north of Vietnam, Phantom Ride is a 20-minute observational documentary. Filmed entirely in black and white and without any spoken words, the film was created in collaboration with a colleague from the Institut des Arts de Diffusion (IAD). Entirely improvised over the course of a few weeks, Phantom Ride is serves as an experiment in observational filmmaking on the road.

The Film

The film unfolds in four distinct chapters, each focusing on a different location and its inhabitants. It begins in Hanoi on the famed “Train Street,” documenting street vendors selling goods along the railway. This chapter captures a specific moment in time, as these vendors navigated a sudden influx of post-lockdown tourism. The area was permanently closed to tourists by local authorities just three weeks after filming was completed.

From the city, the journey moves by motorbike into the mountains of Hà Giang province. In the Quản Bạ region, the film observes a lone fisherman from the Dao ethnic group spending his afternoon by a remote mountain lake. Further north, in the Dong Van Karst Plateau, the filmmakers meet and are hosted by Tub Vang, a Black Hmong man from a village historically connected to the regional opium trade. The final chapter takes place in Saigon, inside the sprawling Tôn Thất Đạm apartment complex, a type of building rapidly disappearing from the city. Here, the film portrays a local singer, Nguyen Thanh Tam, whom the filmmakers met at a coffee shop nestled within the building’s maze-like corridors.

Approach

Phantom Ride commits to a purely observational approach. Without narration or interviews, the film relies on the power of the black-and-white image to tell its story. The focus is on capturing the quiet, everyday moments and the unique environments of its subjects. It is a document of brief but memorable encounters, reflecting on the people and places found along the way.