Lê Bảo's 'Hearing' Lands at Locarno: A Vietnamese Film About Silence, Sound, and the Families That Don't Speak
A Vietnamese film about a family that has stopped talking to each other premiered in the main competition at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival, and the early reviews are leaning into one word: silence.
Lê Bảo's second feature Hearing — titled Thính Giác in Vietnamese — arrived in Locarno's International Competition section as an international co-production spanning Vietnam, Singapore, Norway, France, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia (The Film Stage). World sales are handled by Heretic, the Athens-based outfit that picked up the title ahead of its festival premiere (Variety). IndieWire reported that the film is seeking U.S. distribution (IndieWire).
The story centres on Ninh, a mechanic played by Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn, who installs decibel meters that trigger a glaring blue light whenever noise levels rise too high. He lives with his elderly mother (Ngọc Tản) after separating from his wife (Khánh Huyền), who has moved with their two children to her parents' house nearby. The parents' marriage was destroyed by domestic abuse; Ninh's father (Minh Hùng), the perpetrator, lives rurally and refuses to make peace. Years of silence give way slowly, fitfully, to communication (Variety).
Lê Bão described the film as "a place where I preserved warm memories and profound longing" (Variety). That sensibility is consistent with his earlier work: his debut feature Taste (2021) was a striking, often wordless film with what Variety called "uncanny aesthetic control" (Variety). Taste won a jury prize in Berlin's Encounters competition and went on to collect awards at Singapore, Taipei and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (Variety). Even his 2014 short was titled Scent — each title pointing to a sense-led cinema (Variety).
What sets Hearing apart is its sound. Vincent Villa created the intricate sound design, which the Variety review highlights as exquisite and best experienced in a cinema. The film draws comparisons to experimental formalists Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Pedro Costa, cutting a path between closely observed domestic drama and freely ambient surrealism (Variety).
The International Cinephile Society summarised the film's theme neatly: "silence is golden, but that does not always apply to relationships" (ICS Film). Outlook India's review called it a film that "soaks us in melancholic longing" and "thrums with metaphysical vibrations" (Outlook India).
Produced by Elizabeth Wijaya, Lai Weijie and Huỳnh Yến through Singapore-based E&W Films — whose recent credits include Cannes selections Viet and Nam and 9 Temples to Heaven — Hearing arrives with no confirmed theatrical date outside the festival circuit. For now, the decibel meters are still flashing blue in Locarno (The Film Stage; Variety).
