Harvest

2020 90m 4K

Director’s Statement

It started with a bowl of rice. Having lived in Hanoi for three years, I was looking for the inspiration to break away from the city and begin a long term project in the highlands of the far north. I knew that in this region, rice production was still reliant on labour-intensive farming methods. But for many, a bowl of rice was something taken for granted. What stories lay behind each grain? Whose hands scattered the seeds, planted the seedlings, threshed the stalks?

In 2016, when travelling through the north on a month-long road trip, the people and the friendships I made convinced me that this was a region with a wealth of stories to bring to the world. Three years later, I set out to find the human element of a film which would take rice farming as a structural kernel. The breakthrough came when I was introduced to Ker and family by the owners of a Sapa-based social enterprise. The generation gap was striking. But something resonated in Ker's mischievous eyes, his grandpa's toothless grin and his grandma's fluttering voice. After an afternoon of kwv txhiaj (improvised folk singing) and a walk around the village of Tả Giàng Phình, I knew that my search was over.

Harvest is the culmination of an eighteen month endeavour to bring this family's story to the screen. Their story isn't unique, nor is it representative of all Hmong families in Vietnam or elsewhere. What I hope to achieve in the simplicity of my approach is to create a film that resonates across cultures and borders. Perhaps you're reading this on an iPhone over a bowl of rice. May this film remind you of two inescapable truths – that our prosperity is dependent on the soil beneath our feet and that resilience begins with community.