The stone plateau is hard to resist as a location: the light changes by the hour, the grey rock makes every colour stand out, and half a turn of the camera gives you a completely different frame. Yet very few feature films have actually used the Northeast to tell a story — which is exactly why the ones that did are worth knowing.
“The Story of Pao” (2006)
Directed by Ngo Quang Hai and adapted from Do Bich Thuy’s short story The Jew’s Harp Behind the Stone Fence, the film was shot largely in Lung Cam hamlet, Sung La commune, Dong Van district. It follows a young Hmong woman searching for the truth about her two mothers, and it does something few Vietnamese mountain films manage: it lets its characters stay silent long enough.
The rammed-earth house from the film is now known as Pao’s House and sells tickets to visitors. It is worth remembering that a real family still lives there. We do take guests, but we say this first: knock, stay out of the sleeping rooms, and ask before photographing anyone inside.
“Silence Above the Abyss” (2017)
A television series broadcast on VTV, adapted from Do Bich Thuy’s book of the same name and filmed on the Ha Giang plateau. It goes straight at the practice of bride-pulling and its consequences — a subject travellers ask about constantly and which tourist material rarely addresses honestly. If you want to understand why we ask guests not to joke about “wife-catching”, this is the thing to watch.
Why the Northeast has fewer features than the Northwest
Dien Bien Phu pulled a whole current of war cinema towards the Northwest, and To Hoai’s fiction put Son La on the school syllabus very early. The Northeast has no comparable historical event lodged in the country’s film memory, so it reached the screen later — mainly through contemporary literature written by people from the region itself, Do Bich Thuy being the clearest case. Put differently: films about the Northeast usually begin with a book rather than with a battle.
The Northeast in music videos, shorts and advertising
In practice Ha Giang appears far more often in music videos, short films and advertising than in features. Ma Pi Leng, the Tu San gorge, the Tham Ma switchbacks, the Yen Minh pine forest and the Vuong family mansion are frames repeated so often that viewers recognise them instantly. In Cao Bang, the Ban Gioc falls and Thang Hen lake play the same role.
That has an upside — the region is known — and a downside: a great many crews arrive, dress a scene, and leave without anything staying behind in the place they filmed.
If you are coming here to film
We regularly support small crews, and this is what we tell them beforehand:
- Border zones require permits. A great many of the best locations in Ha Giang, Cao Bang and Lang Son lie inside the border belt. Filming there — flying a drone above all — needs authorisation from the competent authority. Do not fly first and ask afterwards.
- People in the frame must know they are being filmed — including children, and with children that means asking an adult in the family.
- Do not pay to stage a scene: no hiring people to wear ethnic dress for the shot, no handing money to children to do something for the camera.
- Do not film a ceremony you were not invited to. Funerals, Dao maturity rituals and family worship are not public content.
- Pay local people properly: fixers, interpreters, the household lending you their courtyard — all of it is work and all of it gets paid.
Watch one thing before you come
If you have an evening free before the trip, watch The Story of Pao. It will teach you nothing about the roads, but it will change the way you look at the stone fences you are about to ride past several hundred times.
Subtitled versions are not always easy to find outside Vietnam — ask us and we will tell you what is currently available. For films tied to the Northwest — Dien Bien Phu, Sa Pa, Mu Cang Chai — we have a separate page.