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Vietnamese traders have become an important part of everyday commerce in Czechia. Their businesses, ranging from small neighbourhood shops to busy market stalls and wholesale centres, reflect a migration history that began during the socialist era and evolved after the country's political transition in 1989. Over time, these traders helped shape a distinctive commercial network that is now familiar in towns and cities across the country. Prague’s SAPA complex—colloquially referred to as "Little Hanoi"—is the best-known example, serving as both a marketplace and a cultural hub for the Vietnamese community.
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Dužan Duong's Summer School, 2001—which screens today and on Monday at the Raindance Film Festival—centres on a family of Cheb-based Vietnamese market traders whose dynamic is radically altered when the eldest son, 17-year-old Kien (Bui Thể Duong), returns to Czechia after a decade in Vietnam. It's not entirely clear why Kien was sent away, but there is notable tension between him and his father, Zung (Doan Hoang Anh), who has been tasked with duping his fellow stallholders into selling their pitches so the site can be redeveloped. Kien also constantly clashes with his feisty younger brother, Tai (To Tien Tai).
Kien and Tai attend the summer school of the title—Tai is an excellent student, while Kien is reacquainting himself with the Czech language after so many years away—where they meet someone who will make a significant impact on both of their lives. The story unfolds, Rashomon-style, via the perspectives of Kien, Tai, and Zung, each of whom offers their own version of the same events. This is engrossing stuff, and Duong, drawing on his own childhood memories, confidently steers a film that manages to be both a coming-of-age tale and a vivid depiction of the Vietnamese diaspora's experiences in post-communist Czechia.
