We Come Into Life tells the story of the precarious world that two young adults find themselves in following the sudden death of their parents. In an invisible consternation, sister and brother try to find a way to survive. They lose their innocence and come of age amidst an intense urban rhythm of sadness and wilderness. The film captures this special moment of the young characters, faced with a reality of contradiction and tragicomedy aplenty. A strange energy of those hailing from the new generation – unstable, stateless, yet full of life.

“But if ‘things never turn out the way we imagine them to be’, it is indispensable to remind us that the transition to adulthood will be a product of a succession of luck, mistakes, and overflowing currents within the urban maze of the Vietnamese capital. Not subject to any form of control, Mai finds it difficult to keep a job. She is sad, wandering the streets of Hanoi and is invited to sit at the table with two Europeans who don’t ask for much. Vinh finally decides to leave his sofa – where he’s been forced to sleep, eat and watch TV – to find a job. This leads him out of the inner city, to the gate of a fortified house, the retreat of an elderly blind woman.

“The universe of the film is ever changing, floating, detouring. The dead invite themselves into the realm of the living, the living – like ghosts – turn to smoke, technology emerges as if out of the Middle Age, the natural cross paths with the hyper-modern. This cinematic style belongs to the family of constantly-shapeshifting works, operating on an indefinable level of artistic hierarchy.” (Nicolas Bézard, Filmexplorer, January 2021)