Don’t Cry, Butterfly

Linh Duong (Vietnam) took part in LIM | Less is More in 2021 for the development of her feature film “Don’t cry Butterfly”. The film is in post-production in 2024.

Synopsis

After finding out about her husband’s affair on Live TV, Tam absurdly decides to voodoo him back into love, spawning something peculiar at home.

Intentions

Having been raised in an environment with absent father figures, I’ve witnessed countless women-only conversations that complains about the same thing – men. But how can the men torture them so much, if they are hardly even around? While searching for the answer, I found myself lost in the abyss of self-inflicted entrapment and internalised misogyny. Through Tam, I want to question the women if they are putting their expectation for happiness at the wrong place, and if they are truly fighting the cause of their misery? perhaps women are not victims of men, instead both are victims of a ruthless and vicious social system.

The magical realism element, the House Spirit, extends beyond Tam’s house. In my universe, each and every house has one House Spirit unique to their own tragedy. This inspiration actually comes from a popular saying in Vietnam that I later discovered to be written by Tolstoy: “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.