Summer School, 2001

Summer, 2001. Seventeen-year-old Kien returns from Vietnam to his family’s stall at the Cheb market, his bright red hair marking both rebellion and distance. After ten years away, home is no longer familiar: his father remains cold and distant, his mother anxious to hold the family together, and his younger brother unwilling to forgive his absence.

As Kien readjusts, his days unfold between struggling through Czech grammar lessons and tentative flirtations by the lake. Beneath the lightness of these everyday moments, however, a long-buried secret begins to surface—one that threatens to disrupt not only the fragile family dynamic, but life within the tight-knit market community itself.

Featuring a largely non-professional Vietnamese cast, director Dužan Duong crafts an intimate portrait of the diaspora in the Czech Republic. Structured in chapters, the film grants each character their own perspective, allowing their experiences to unfold from within. Through this, we witness not only the lived reality of second-generation migrants, but also the difficult choices their parents must make while building a life in a foreign land.

In the presence of filmmaker Dužan Duong.

DUŽAN DUONG
Dužan Duong is a Vietnamese-Czech director and cinematographer. Moving to Czech Republic at age four, he studied banking and insurance at the University of Economics and briefly attended FAMU’s editing department. A self-taught filmmaker, he made his debut with the short film Mat Goc (2015) at Jihlava IDFF. His follow-up, Bo Hai (2017), screened at FAMUFest, Finale Plzeň, Prague Shorts, SGIFF, and Cottbus IFF, winning multiple awards. In 2025, his debut feature Summer School, 2001 premiered at Karlovy Vary IFF and was Czech’s official entry for Best International Film at the Academy Awards in 2025.

Sun Apr 26, 2026 | 16:00
Stadtkino
Red Lotus 2026

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Czech Republic, Vietnam 2025
104 Min | Color | Vietnamese and Czech with English subtitles

Directed by Dužan DUONG

Summer School, 2001 © nutprodukce