Fifth Cinema is a hybrid essay film that combines Nguyen Trinh Thi’s own images with found footage of popular movies, government films, news reels, and internet materials, to propose a critical reflection on image making and interpretation. It takes audiences on a journey through cinematic and topical terrains using landscape as a metaphor to address the unstable and complex nature of representation. The work expands on Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay’s concept of ‘Fourth Cinema’, an encompassing definition of cinema for and by indigenous people in contrast with the American (First), Art House (Second), and Third World (Third) Cinema. The presence of Nguyen’s daughter throughout the film connects the larger historical and ongoing issues around colonialism and indigeneity to the personal relationship between a mother and a daughter. It adds a speculative dimension on how urgent social and political questions, including those about the role of women in society, will be taken forward by future generations.

Nguyen Trinh Thi (b. 1973, Vietnam) is a Hanoi—based experimental filmmaker and moving image artist whose practice investigates the memory and history of Vietnam. She uses a wide range of materials and artistic approaches including found footage, sound, and performance to propose new forms of storytelling that unveil hidden or misinterpreted aspects of the county’s past. Known for her powerful filmic montages and original interdisciplinary conceptual associations, her work addresses urgent contemporary questions relating to representation, landscape, indigeneity, and ecology. Nguyễn’s work has been widely exhibited in film and contemporary art related contexts including Documenta fifteen (2022), 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2018); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015). She is also founder and director of Hanoi DOCLAB, an independent center for documentary film and the moving image art in Hanoi since 2009.