- Share this article on Facebook
- Share this article on Twitter
- Share this article on Flipboard
- Share this article on Email
- Show additional share options
- Share this article on Linkedin
- Share this article on Pinit
- Share this article on Reddit
- Share this article on Tumblr
- Share this article on Whatsapp
- Share this article on Print
- Share this article on Comment
The Oldenburg International Film Festival will honor Laotian director Mattie Do with a tribute to her life and work at its 2021 event. Do will receive the 2021 German Independence Honorary Tribute Award.
Born in California to Lao refugees, she returned to Laos in 2010 for her directorial debut Chanthaly in 2013. The horror film, in which a sickly young woman sees visions of her dead mother, combined genre elements with sharp social commentary. In addition to being the first Laotian film from a female director, it was also the country’s first horror film, and the first Laotian film to screen outside Southeast Asia, showing at the Austin Fantastic Fest.
Related Stories
Do’s 2016 follow-up, Dearest Sister, screened at Fantastic Fest, the London Film Festival and at the Stiges festival in Spain, where it received a Special Jury mention. It was later picked as Laos’ first-ever submission for the best foreign-language film Oscar at the 90th Academy Awards.
Do has been active in building up Laos’ movie infrastructure, working with the country’s Ministry of Culture to create co-production treaties and find ways around Laos’ strict censorship laws. She has produced Laos’ first-ever American and Japanese co-productions.
After the success of Dearest Sister, which was partly financed via crowd-funding, Do and screenwriter Chris Larsen made their first film, Chanthaly, publicly available, including releasing all raw material from the film to allow fans to do their own directors’ cuts of the movie.
Do’s third feature, The Long Walk, premiered at Venice Days in 2019 and had its German premiere in Oldenburg. The drama follows a Laotian hermit who encounters the ghost of a road accident victim who transports the hermit back in time 50 years to the moment of his mother’s painful death.
A self-proclaimed “accidental filmmaker,” Do had no background in film. She initially planned to study ballet but when her mother fell ill, she got a degree in cosmetology to help support her family. That background helped land her a job as a makeup artist at legendary Italian film studio Cinecittà, using the money to pay for her ballet studies.
It was when she moved to Laos to be with her father that a chance encounter with the president and vice president of Laos Art Media at a party at the Luang Prabang Film Festival set her on a different path. The Laos film industry was in a crisis and they needed directors. British writer Chris Larsen had a project, Chanthaly, ready to go, but Larsen didn’t speak Laos. He asked Do to direct, handing her a book to learn the craft: Directing by Michael Rabiger.
“[He said] ‘Read this book and you’ll be fine.’ And that’s exactly what I did and I made my first film,” Do recalls.
As a truly independent filmmaker who combines genre cinema with an auteur touch, Mattie Do seems ideally suited to Oldenburg, Germany’s most important independent film festival. In a statement, Oldenburg called the Laotian director “bold and fearless [who is] shaking up her country’s film industry and cementing a place as one of the most exciting new voices in Asian genre cinema.”
The 2021 Oldenburg Film Festival runs Sept. 15-19.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day