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Kieu Chinh has spent 68 years as an actor, and most of those years carried her further from the country where she began, through Hollywood, through “The Joy Luck Club,” through “The Sympathizer,” through a career built
largely outside the borders of the country that shaped her.
This week, that arc bends back. “Chrysalis,” adapted from the memoir of Vietnamese-American artist Sir Daniel K. Winn and starring Kieu Chinh as his grandmother in 1972 Saigon, competes in the official selection of the Danang Asian Film Festival, marking the actor’s first time returning to Vietnamese soil in competition with a film of her own.
“My life has carried me from Saigon to Hollywood and back again, but Vietnam has always remained in my heart,” Kieu Chinh tells Variety. “To return now with ‘Chrysalis,’ and to have this film welcomed in competition in Danang on Vietnamese soil, feels like coming home.”
DANAFF IV runs through July 4, in Danang, organized by the Vietnam Film Development Association in partnership with the Danang People’s Committee. “Chrysalis” is one of the festival’s selections in this year’s edition, which also carries a “Focus on American Cinema” program, and its presence in competition lands as something closer to a homecoming than a premiere for nearly everyone connected to the project.
The film is adapted from “The Scarcity of Love,” Winn’s memoir, which traces his journey from a childhood in Vietnam through displacement and loss to his later career as an internationally recognized painter and sculptor working in a style he calls “Existential Surrealism,” using dreamlike compositions to examine the nature of existence. Directed by J. Robert Schulz from a screenplay by Andrew Creme, based on a story by Winn, Randall J. Slavin and Schulz, “Chrysalis” intercuts Winn’s present-day life as an artist, hammering at a mysterious metal apple in his studio, with his childhood in war-torn Saigon, where a boy nicknamed Cu Den navigates an absent mother working in a brothel, a stepfather who offers him neither love nor support, a stint in a Catholic orphanage where he is bullied and falls ill, and a sudden reunion with the father he believed dead.
At the center of all of it is his grandmother, Ba Noi, the role played by Kieu Chinh. It is Ba Noi’s act of selfless love in sending the boy to the orphanage, and her unwavering care in the years that follow, that allows his artistic spark to take hold as a means of self-expression amid the chaos around him. “I have known women like her all my life, and I have lived through the years this family lived through,” Kieu Chinh tells Variety. “I did not need to imagine her. To give voice to a Vietnamese grandmother in a Vietnamese story felt like something I was meant to do.”
According to the film’s producers, “Chrysalis” marks the first time the Vietnamese government has granted an American production permission to film a wartime narrative on location in the country, a distinction that shadows nearly every other claim made about the project. Shooting took place across Ho Chi Minh City and Orange County and Los Angeles, California, in April 2025, with the bulk of the wartime sequences captured on Vietnamese soil rather than recreated on a studio backlot abroad. Pre-production ran from January to April 2025, with post-production stretching from May 2025 through March 2026.
The cast surrounding Kieu Chinh draws heavily from Vietnam’s own industry. Nguyen Vu Uy Nhan, known for “Tiem An Cua Quy” and “Fly 2023,” plays child Daniel, while Le Anh Huy, of “Kieu” and the TV series “Luoi Troi,” plays a young adult version of the character reunited with his grandmother after more than a decade apart, a reunion the film’s character notes describe as devastating in its brevity: Ba Noi dies shortly after the two are reconciled, and the young adult Daniel is too consumed by denial to attend her funeral. Samuel An, who has appeared in “Thien Than Ho Menh” and “Em Va Trinh,” plays Daniel’s father, an interpreter who worked between the American and South Vietnamese militaries before later taking a position with the U.S. embassy, the job that ultimately allows him to bring his family, including Child Daniel, out of the country at the end of the war. Winn himself appears in the present-day timeline as the adult artist.
Behind the camera, the production paired Vietnam-based and U.S.-based producing teams. Tien Pham of Legend Artist Entertainment, whose credits include “The Sympathizer” and “NCIS-LA,” and Dang Thu Hien, a former Vietnam marketing director for Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Marvel, 20th Century Studios and CJ E&M, serve as producer and co-producer, respectively, alongside David Hopwood of Group of Ferrets, whose credits include “Den of Thieves” and the Golden Globe-nominated “CAKE.” Steve Longi of Longitude Entertainment, whose credits include the Academy Award-winning “Hacksaw Ridge,” also produces. Winn and Slavin produce through their banner WS Productions, the entity behind Winn Slavin Fine Art, with prior film credits including “Creation” and “Ectropy.” The score comes from Czech-born composer Elia Cmiral, whose film credits include “Ronin,” “Stigmata” and “Wrong Turn,” and who also scored the video game “Spec Ops: The Line” and the television series “Nash Bridges.”
“The cooperative nature of its production, uniting talent from multiple continents, is an example of the collaboration and acceptance that is so needed in the world today,” Slavin tells Variety. “It speaks to vital issues regarding refugee displacement, immigration, and personal resilience. The film features talented cast members from four countries and employed highly skilled crew members from both Vietnam and the U.S. We are honored to be included in the 4th Danang Asian Film Festival and hope that ‘Chrysalis’ will stand as a template for future international co-productions between Vietnam and the global film community.”
The VFDA’s president and DANAFF’s founding director, Dr. Ngo Phuong Lan, echoed that framing in a statement. “‘Chrysalis’ stands out as a notable example of collaboration between international filmmakers and Vietnam’s talented actors, creative professionals, and production teams,” she said. “The film’s selection for the competition program at DANAFF IV reflects the growing momentum of cross-border film productions across Asia and around the world.” She added that the VFDA hopes Vietnam will keep building its reputation with American and international filmmakers “not only because of its diverse landscapes and increasingly skilled film workforce, but also because of its welcoming collaborative environment and rich creative potential for telling cinematic stories with global resonance.”
“Vietnam isn’t just the backdrop of ‘Chrysalis.’ It’s woven into every part of it, the people, the culture, the landscapes, the memories,” Schulz tells Variety. “As an outsider, I never wanted to impose my perspective on that. I wanted to listen, learn, and work alongside the incredible Vietnamese cast and crew who helped bring the story to life. Their insight and craftsmanship gave the film a level of authenticity that simply couldn’t have been recreated anywhere else.”
“Awards and recognition are wonderful, but what means the most to me is seeing ‘Chrysalis’ embraced and become part of a larger conversation about family, identity, and search for home between two worlds,” he adds. “To be included at DANAFF is a tremendous honor, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring the film back to the country that inspired it.”
Winn, who serves as both the film’s subject and an executive producer, wrote separately about the film’s origins in an artist’s statement. “The pain demanded more,” he wrote. “Something beyond an item on a wall to be contemplated in silence. Something that clutched the soul and refused to release. That is why I made ‘Chrysalis.'”
“I left Vietnam as a child. I carried that departure with me for decades,” Winn tells Variety. “And now to return with this film, to have Vietnam embrace it, feels like a completion I did not know I was searching for. It is the chrysalis finally opening.”
“‘Chrysalis’ is not a film about an artist,” Winn adds. “It is a film about all of us, the human condition, the human emotion, the adversity we all carry and the ways we find to overcome it. Without pain, we would not understand what happiness is. Without dark, there is no understanding what light is.”
“Chrysalis” arrives in Danang having already traveled through several other rooms this year. The film made its market debut at the 2026 Cannes Film Market with two market screenings, where Winn, Slavin, Schulz and Kieu Chinh walked the Cannes red carpet together, and it picked up a handful of honors on the festival and summit circuit, including a best actress recognition for Kieu Chinh and a best director nod for Schulz from the I Success International Awards, along with a best autobiographical work prize for Winn at the Global Traveler Awards. Schulz also won best director at the Munich Film Awards in 2025 for the project, as well as best experimental film prizes from the LA Indie Shorts Awards and the Experimental, Dance & Music Film Festival.
The film’s chronology stretches well beyond its DANAFF stop: after Cannes in May and Danang in June, “Chrysalis” is scheduled to screen in Ho Chi Minh City in September, followed by a stop in Beverly Hills in October ahead of a planned worldwide release in November.
“I hope they feel their story is being told with love and with truth,” Kieu Chinh says. “‘Chrysalis’ is about a Vietnamese family and a Vietnamese heart. I want our audiences at home to feel seen, and to feel proud. And to know that no matter how far life carries any of us, the love for Vietnam is always in our heart.”
