Tử Tế Hay Là Chuyện Ứng Xử / The Story of Kindness or How to Behave

A searing masterpiece of Vietnamese cinema that wields its gentle title as a weapon of social critique.

Trần Văn Thủy’s The Story of Kindness or How to Behave is not a moral fable but a radical and poetic act of witness. Created during Vietnam's impoverished "Subsidy Period," almost ten years after the official end of the American War in Vietnam, this experimental documentary constructs a stark, silent collage of a society grappling with the dissonance between ideology and daily survival.

Through its unflinching gaze—from the haunting corridors of a mental asylum to the brutal reality of a dog being butchered for food—the film interrogates the very possibility of "kindness" in a world stripped to its barest essentials. This restored landmark is a profound and challenging meditation on humanity, a film that finds unsettling beauty in the struggle to remain human.

The film was inspired by the final words of a dying filmmaker who urged his friends to create a film about "tu te," meaning human relations and fraternity. Introduced by filmmaker Esther Johnson, with a message from the film's director.