Cultural story: To keep war-themed films... out of storage

For a long time, war-themed films have been mainly ordered by the State to serve political tasks. According to information from the Department of Cinema (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism), from 2020 to now, on average, each year the State has ordered 2-3 feature films, 30 documentaries, scientific films and nearly 20 animated films to serve political tasks commemorating major national holidays from the budget. The budget for producing films serving political tasks is quite large, but most of the works are not of commensurate quality and do not attract audiences...

Because the quality of the films is not as expected, most war movies are only released on certain anniversaries of the year and then quietly stored away. This causes a huge waste of the state budget and disadvantages the audience who want to enjoy this genre of film.

Explaining the reason why most war films produced in recent times are not attractive and cannot "pull" audiences to the cinema, film research experts say that it is mainly due to the lack of good scripts, unsystematic production and especially the inflexible distribution. Currently, Vietnamese cinema has made very encouraging progress, many films have earned hundreds of billions of VND, and are professionally and methodically produced, but films invested by the State are still lagging behind and find it difficult to compete.

However, that does not mean that war films are not attractive. On the contrary, this is a rich subject area with a lot of potential, but filmmakers have not exploited it and there are still many limitations in promoting their works. For example, before the film Tunnels: Sun in the Dark, in 2024, the film Peach, Pho and Piano created a phenomenon when it was loved by the audience, lining up to buy tickets. Although the revenue was not enough to break even, this is considered a positive sign showing that the audience still loves films about war.

At this time, the box office fever of Tunnels: Sun in the Dark once again proves that if a war-themed film does well, the audience will not turn their backs, but on the contrary, they are willing to line up to buy tickets to support it.

Minh Ngoc

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/van-hoa/202504/cau-chuyen-van-hoa-de-phim-ve-de-tai-chien-tranh-khong-cat-kho-6e62b83/