‘The New Boy’ will compete in a category at the 2^nd Da Nang Asian Film Festival (DANAFF 2). The good news not only improves the quality of the film festival but also creates opportunities for local audiences to enjoy movies of international stature.

Actress Cate Blanchett, who starred in ‘the New Boy’, has won two two Academy Awards.

The New Boy is a 2023 Australian drama film written and directed by Warwick Thornton, and starring Aswan Reid as the title character, alongside Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair, and Cate Blanchett, who was also a producer of the film. It follows a young Aboriginal Australian orphan boy who is brought into a Christian monastery, run by a renegade nun, where he begins to question his faith and loyalty to his heritage. The film premiered at the 76^th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2023, and was theatrically released in Australia on 6 July 2023 by Roadshow Films. It received generally positive reviews from critics.

It is worth noting that in the movie, A-list Hollywood star Cate Blanchett plays Sister Eileen, a stoically determined nun running an institution for orphans in South Australia’s remote and punishingly dry hinterland in the early 1940s. Nobody in the outside world has realised that the priest in charge of this mission school has actually been dead for more than a year. If a letter arrives for Father, Sister Eileen answers in a priestly voice. Delivery men are told he is indisposed. There is a war on. Assisted by an Aboriginal nun (Deborah Mailman) known simply as Sister Mum, and a general handyman, George (Wayne Blair), Sister Eileen is clearly holding onto the hope that they will never be rumbled.

Cate Blanchett is an Australian actress, born in Melbourne in 1969. Blanchett’s career began on the stage at the Sydney Theatre Company in David Mamet’s Oleanna in 1992. She has received numerous awards, including 2 Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, 3 Screen Actors Guild Awards, 3 Golden Globes, 3 BAFTA Awards, and 1 Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival. She gained international attention for her role as Elizabeth I of England in ‘Elizabeth’ (1998), for which she won her first Oscar nomination, and especially for playing the role of Galadriel in the trilogy ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

Besides Blanchett's popularity, ‘The New Boy’ director Warwick Thornton also won many awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Thornton is an Australian film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. His debut feature film Samson and Delilah won the Caméra d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the award for Best Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, along with many other awards around the world. He also won the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Film in 2017 for Sweet Country, along with the Special Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival and the Platform Prize at Toronto International Film Festival the same year. The New Boy is his third feature film.

Debuting at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, ‘The New Boy’ competed for the Un Certain Regard (meaning 'a certain glance'), which is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the salle Debussy, parallel to the competition for the Palme d'Or. This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob.

At DANAFF 2, the movie ‘The New Boy’ will compete in the Asian film category with 12 other entries from such countries as Iran, South Korea, Japan, China, India. In a much-awaited news, Director Warwick Thornton said he intends to make trip to Da Nang to interact with the local audience.

Two Vietnamese films that will compete in the same category are ‘Cu-li Khong Bao Gio khoc’(Cu Li Never Cries) and ‘Ben Trong Vo Ken Vang’ (Inside the Golden Cocoon) by directors Pham Ngoc Lan and Pham Thien An respectively. The black-and-white drama ‘Cu Li Never Cries’ has won the ‘Best First Feature’ award at the Berlin International Film Festival whilst the ‘Inside the Golden Cocoon’  has won the “Golden Lens” Award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

At DANAFF 2 this year, the Chairman of the Jury for the Asian Film category will be Chinese-French director and writer Dai Sijie, who made the nominated film 'Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress’, one of the 2003 Golden Globe nominees. He was one of the most influential figures on Chinese literature and cinema in particular, and Asian and the world in general in the early days of the 21st century.

Well-known film director and producer from Hong Kong (China) Stanley Kwan will be Chairman of the Jury of the Vietnamese Film category at DANAFF II.

Besides, there are many famous figures of domestic and international cinema such as Mariette Rissenbeek – the former Executive Director of the Berlin International Film Festival, Vietnamese People's Artist Le Khanh, renowned actress Tran Nu Yen Khe.

Addressing the recently-held DANAFF 2 press conference, Ngo Luong Lan, the Chairman of the Vietnam Cinema Promotion Association said: “For the second time, we want this year's event to be more professional, leaving many marks and better quality than the first edition of DANAF. The quality of this edition’s films makes the organizers or selection committee feel quite satisfied. In the category of competing films, especially Asian films, there will be films that will be internationally premiered in Viet Nam for the first time. With a team of prestigious judges and many quality cinematographic works, especially the movie’ The New Boy’, DANAFF 2 promises to be a great success".

Reporting by DOAN GIA HUY - Translating by A.THU, T.TUNG