Triangle

A mother goes through a box of keepsakes, showing photographs and reading love letters out loud in a soft voice. Meanwhile a father leafs through an ethnography book, then fixes his gaze on a single, significant photograph. These are the parents of French-Vietnamese filmmaker Anaël Dang, who, 21 years ago, received an envelope with life-changing contents.

The envelope, from his father, revealed a painful family secret that became an increasingly heavy burden with the passing of the years. In this essayistic family portrait, Dang, now 41, seeks to give voice to a long unspoken secret. He uses his camera to break the silence and enable his parents to talk about the past—to bring some softness to this ossified relationship.