Vietnamese cinema has never seen so many films achieve hundreds of billions of VND in revenue as it does now. According to Box Office Viet Nam, in 2025, total box office revenue reached approximately 5,593 billion VND, with over 70 million tickets sold. The 10 most successful Vietnamese films alone brought in 2,765 billion VND.

In the first six months of this year, the entire market generated 3,198 billion VND, an increase of about 181 billion VND compared to the same period last year, marking a growth of approximately 6%. This drew over 35 million viewers to cinemas. Local films accounted for over 60% of the market share, with 10 Vietnamese films surpassing the 100 billion VND revenue mark in just half a year.

These figures indicate a robust growth market, where domestic cinema is increasingly outperforming foreign films.

However, a paradox emerges simultaneously.

Examining the most successful films reveals a clear repetition of themes: family, kinship, parent-child conflicts, generation gaps, love, everyday misunderstandings, humorous daily life stories, personal tragedies, karma, and popular horror films featuring urban legends, folklore, ghosts, curses, and retribution. These narratives are close to real life, easy to recognize, and resonate with a broad audience—familiar characteristics of popular or commercial cinema.

Do Vietnamese audiences genuinely prefer only mainstream films? Or is the market primarily offering them such a limited range of choices?

This phenomenon cannot be discussed without starting with Tran Thanh. From Bo Gia, Nha Ba Nu, and Mai, to Bo Tu Bao Thu and Tho Oi, a new commercial film genre has distinctly taken shape.

Tran Thanh continues to be the director with the year's highest-grossing film, "Tho Oi", released during Tet. Photo: Character provided

Without grand worlds, superheroes, or intercontinental adventures, Tran Thanh's films often focus on conflicts within a working-class family, a mother selling banh canh (noodle soup), a romance across wealth and class divides, or betrayal and deception in seemingly perfect urban marriages. All his films have earned hundreds of billions of VND, helping Tran Thanh maintain his leading position in the Tet film race for the past five years, far ahead of his competitors.

By exploring themes appealing to popular taste, Tran Thanh likely recognized early on what commercial cinema often takes a long time to understand: audiences do not necessarily need a grand story.

Relatability is a fundamental aspect of commercial cinema. Audiences recognize themselves in the characters, their parents, their children, family arguments, generational prejudices, and psychological wounds they may never have named. This familiarity creates a strong word-of-mouth effect. Viewers do not just watch films; they feel as if their own stories are being told.

Trailer for Tran Thanh's film "Nha Ba Nu" (2023). Video: Film crew provided

However, the success of this film genre also creates another consequence. A formula that consistently proves its money-making potential easily becomes a safe formula. When a safe formula becomes the prevailing taste, films that deviate from it face a greater cost.

The market also features a few films with greater ambition in terms of themes, artistic form, cinematic language, or production scale. However, these works struggle at the box office, with Ho Linh Trang Si being the latest example. Some films, highly acclaimed and award-winning at international festivals, remain largely invisible to domestic audiences. For instance, Ben Trong Vo Ken Vang by Pham Thien An, Culi Khong Bao Gio Khoc by Pham Ngoc Lan, and Mua Tren Canh Buom by Duong Dieu Linh—three films that won Best Debut Film awards for three young directors at the world's three largest international film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice)—all had very low revenues.

Following Tran Thanh, two more filmmakers are quickly learning to transform everyday material with a distinctly "popular voice" into cinematic products: Huynh Lap and Khuong Ngoc.

These two did not enter directing through traditional training. They emerged from theater, acting, entertainment, and popular culture. Like Tran Thanh, they understand how a line can generate laughter, a situation can evoke tears, and a character can create empathy. They grasp the rhythm of a show, the pace of social media, and the immediate public reaction to relatable themes that resonate with the majority.

Within three years, Huynh Lap had two films surpass 200 billion VND (Nha Gia Tien and Nghi He So Nghi Huu). In the same period, Khuong Ngoc had three films around 100 billion VND (Chi Dau, Cuc Vang Cua Ngoai, and Len Huong), receiving positive feedback from both media and audiences.

Their rise, therefore, may not just be about two new directors. It could signal a generation of new commercial filmmakers, where the distinction between actor, entertainer, content creator, director, and producer is increasingly blurring.

Trailer for the film "Chi Dau". Video: Film crew provided

Huynh Lap represents a form of cinema based on folklore, tradition, family, humor, and emotion. Khuong Ngoc demonstrates another type of commercial filmmaking, also stemming from acting experience but seeking to build a unique language and exploring storytelling capabilities further.

Each director explains their film choices. Tran Thanh says he likes to recreate life based on his observations of everyday relationships. For example, in Nha Ba Nu—a Tet 2023 film—the character Ba Nu, busy making a living running a small street stall, forgets to empathize with her children's feelings. He believes that while a director may explore a mainstream story, whether a film feels "cheap" or "common" depends on the creator's skill, not the theme itself.

Khuong Ngoc states he wants to portray mothers and grandmothers through cinematic language, based on childhood memories. With Cuc Vang Cua Ngoai, the setting is a typical working-class alley in Ho Chi Minh City, featuring neighbors caring for each other, sharing meals in times of hardship, and the mother character drinking ice water or keeping leftover food in the refrigerator. "For me, the ultimate goal is the audience's emotion," he says.

A question arises: How far can Tran Thanh, Huynh Lap, and Khuong Ngoc go, given that each has already shown signs of repetition?

Bo Tu Bao Thu and Tho Oi by Tran Thanh indicate that this successful filmmaker is struggling to find new storytelling forms. Nghi He So Nghi Huu by Huynh Lap revealed weaknesses in cinematic storytelling, with many scenes staged like short sketches. And Khuong Ngoc, despite still exploring with Len Huong, has also shown that the director opts for a more compromising narrative style to please the majority.

Cinema does not merely serve tastes; it also creates them. Film history has repeatedly proven this. New films do not just meet existing audience demands. They sometimes create needs that audiences were previously unaware they had.

Vietnamese audiences today have changed significantly compared to ten or twenty years ago. They watch American, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai films. They stream films on Netflix, YouTube, and online platforms. They can access films once confined to film festivals.

Their tastes, therefore, are not static.

If Vietnamese cinema only looks at the previous year's box office charts to decide the next year's films, the industry risks becoming adept at optimizing what is known but increasingly poor at discovering the unknown. That is the difference between a developing film market and a truly mature film industry.

A healthy film industry is not one with only high-grossing films. It is an industry where a film can both sell many tickets and make audiences want to return to the cinema next time to enjoy a completely different genre.

Next: Popular does not mean "ordinary"

Le Hong Lam