By the Seine or the Kitchen Table: “All of a Sudden” and “On Healing Lands, Birds Perch” in Cambridge

Just yards from the heart of Harvard Square, the Brattle Theatre remains Cambridge’s cinematic centerpiece. This month, Independent Film Festival Boston, New England’s largest film festival, is hosting its annual Fall Focus exclusively at the Brattle. The program includes top works from over a dozen countries, including “All of a Sudden,” which won Best Actress at Cannes and screened last Saturday as Japan’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards. Meanwhile, last Friday at CGIS South, the Harvard Vietnamese Association screened “On Healing Lands, Birds Perch,” an Oscar-shortlisted documentary by Harvard Business School alumna Naja Phạm Lockwood, followed by a Q&A with the director.

A co-production of France, Japan, Belgium, and Germany, “All of a Sudden” marks “Drive My Car” director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s foray into French-language film alongside co-writer Léa Le Dimna. Hamaguchi was a Visiting Artist in Residence at Harvard’s Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies for the 2016–17 academic year, and this screening marks the latest return of his work to Cambridge.

Here Hamaguchi trades the rhythms of a Hiroshima-set road drama for a quieter, more interior study. Based loosely on the non-fiction book “You and I—The Illness Suddenly Get Worse” by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono, the film follows Marie-Lou Fontaine, a nursing home director in the Parisian suburbs who attempts to pioneer a more humane approach to elder care called “Humanitude”; she soon meets Mari Morisaki, a terminally ill Japanese playwright.

One of the film’s most compelling aspects is its French-Japanese pairing. Marie-Lou and Mari initially connect largely because of Marie-Lou’s knowledge of Japanese. Early on, Marie-Lou’s use of Japanese instead of French during a post-show Q&A creates intimacy between them in a crowded theatre. As their relationship develops, French and Japanese become equally weighted in their dynamic, and both characters shift into the other’s native tongue in moments of closeness.

Despite their differing backgrounds, the characters are intimately connected by language, down to the fact that—as one character remarks—they share nearly the same first name. In a world centered on a character fighting dehumanizing medical practices, “All of a Sudden” shows that translation is truly an empathetic art, one in which all communication is mediated through the effort to turn inner experience into outward speech and back again.

The film’s use of color is equally deliberate. Reminiscent of the use of orange and yellow winter clothing against a muted environment in his preceding film “Evil Does Not Exist,” “All of a Sudden” uses the interaction between dress colors and their surroundings to great effect. Goldenrod, teal, and hospital-gown blue dominate, while shades of ruby later signal change. Teal outfits often blend into the walls behind them, directing the viewer’s gaze toward the figure’s hands and face. Characters’ outfits notably converge in hue during scenes of connection. By the time Mari emerges in ruby, the audience has learned the film’s palette, making her contrast all the more noticeable as she pairs only with the outward-facing curtains in a room of cool-colored people.

Though somewhat didactic at times, its naturalistic depiction of humanity and leisurely pace ground the film’s more overt messaging, creating a truly beautiful portrait of what it means not only to be human, but to be humanized.

If “All of a Sudden” asks what intimacy looks like across languages, “On Healing Lands, Birds Perch” asks what remembrance and forgiveness look like across a war. The documentary short centers on the families of the figures featured in Eddie Adams’ 1969 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, “Saigon Execution,” in which South Vietnamese General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan is featured holding a pistol to the head of Việt Cộng Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém moments before his execution, following an alleged killing of a South Vietnamese officer and his family. Lockwood interviews Captain Lém’s children in Vietnam and, in the United States, the families of General Loan and Rear Admiral Huấn, the surviving child of the South Vietnamese family.

In captioning the film, the audience becomes especially relevant, as the film avoids conventional captions; the filmmaker chose linguistically dynamic captions, showing English during Vietnamese dialogue and Vietnamese during English dialogue, refusing to privilege one over the other. Similarly, “On Healing Lands, Birds Perch” aimed to balance the perspectives of both North and South Vietnam and largely succeeded. Made with the Vietnamese government’s clearance, the film premiered in the U.S. at Martha’s Vineyard in March 2025 before quickly spreading internationally.

Ultimately, the viewer encounters a story that transcends borders. In a post-screening conversation with Lockwood, she discussed what she was most proud of about the film. “This is the first film that shows the perspective of both sides of the Vietnam War, if you can believe that. After fifty years, this is the first film that really talks from the perspective of the Vietnamese,” Lockwood commented.

At one point Lockwood considered featuring Jane Fonda in the film. “Maybe I would have won the Oscars for that, but in any case, I chose really—because it’s a short and you really have to be focused—I chose to really focus on the Vietnamese side, on all sides, on both sides of the Vietnamese war,” she stated.

After the Q&A, I approached Lockwood to ask about her decision to focus the film on the Vietnamese perspective. We quickly realized that, despite having homelands on opposite sides of the world—Iraq and Vietnam—we shared a hometown in Worcester, Massachusetts. During the Q&A, guests fielded questions in both Vietnamese and English. While speaking with her and so many others at the screening, I stumbled over a few sentences of broken Vietnamese, and I was struck by how easily the conversation turned into a sense of community among the friends gathered around us. Perhaps in a way, it was a small echo of the film’s call for reconciliation and reconnection half a century out.

More broadly, independent and international films bring otherwise unseen perspectives to the forefront. Watching a film that may not have the largest budget or may be in a language outside the viewer’s comprehension can spur the viewer to truly begin to grasp a distinct, yet universal life outside one’s own. Whether in the Humanitude of Marie-Lou or in Lockwood’s desire to show the painful, long-lasting impacts of war regardless of side, it is no coincidence that so much independent and international film calls on the audience to find sympathy with, and humanity in, their “out-group.” And sometimes, in hoping to understand someone halfway across the world, you discover a neighbor all along.

For students and community members interested in independent film, the second half of the 12th Annual Fall Focus will be screening from Thursday, Oct. 29 to Wednesday, Nov. 4.

Featured films include Cannes Jury Prize winner and Bulgarian Oscar entry “The Dreamed Adventure,” as well as Belgian Oscar entry “Coward.”

In kind, the Boston Asian American Film Festival premieres today alongside the Boston Palestine Film Festival premiering tomorrow, both running until Oct. 25. At the former, audiences interested in film of the Vietnamese diaspora may view the centerpiece “Y Vân: The Lost Sounds of Saigon” alongside several other new and highly acclaimed films, including fellow headliners “Isle Child,” “Jersey Boy,” and “Montreal, My Beautiful.”

Wren Horne-Sarkees ’29 (wrenhorne@college.harvard.edu) hopes you find a film to hold close.