Kieu Chinh has spent 68 years as an actor, and most of those years carried her further from the country where she began, through Hollywood, through “The Joy Luck Club,” through “The Sympathizer,” through a career built largely outside the borders of the country that shaped her.
This week, that arc bends back. “Chrysalis,” adapted from the memoir of Vietnamese-American artist Sir Daniel K. Winn and starring Kieu Chinh as his grandmother in 1972 Saigon, competes in the official selection of the Danang Asian Film Festival, marking the actor’s first time returning to Vietnamese soil in competition with a film of her own.
“My life has carried me from Saigon to Hollywood and back again, but Vietnam has always remained in my heart,” Kieu Chinh tells Variety. “To return now with ‘Chrysalis,’ and to have this film welcomed in competition in Danang on Vietnamese soil, feels like coming home.”
DANAFF IV runs through July 4, in Danang, organized by the Vietnam Film Development Association in partnership with the Danang People’s Committee. “Chrysalis” is one of the festival’s selections in this year’s edition, which also carries a “Focus on American Cinema” program, and its presence in competition lands as something closer to a homecoming than a premiere for nearly everyone connected to the project.
