Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, winner of the Best Director award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival for Grand Tour, was brought to tears by a haunting a cappella performance of the Vietnamese folk song Da co hoai lang by artist Linh Huyen.

In an interview with In Review Online, Gomes recounted the extraordinary moment during the final week of filming in Vietnam when the unexpected song changed the very ending of his film.

While preparing to wrap up Grand Tour, a Vietnamese woman approached him during lunch and said, “I have a song. It’s a tragic love ballad written in 1918.”

Initially dismissive, Gomes joked with his crew, “You guys are crazy. I’m finishing this film. I don’t have time for new songs.”

But his colleagues insisted. Reluctantly sacrificing his lunch break, Gomes listened as the woman - Linh Huyen - began to sing. Unaccompanied, her voice carried the mournful melody of Da co hoai lang, a song that embodies longing and separation.

“Ten seconds in, I was crying,” Gomes recalled. “I knew immediately this was the ending. Not the literal last scene, but the moment just before Molly’s death. It was perfect.”

The experience, he said, taught him an important lesson: “Sometimes, luck presents itself through music. Even in your final days on set, you have to be ready to listen.”

In an interview with VietNamNet, Linh Huyen explained how she came to sing in the film.

Initially, she auditioned for a minor role as an Asian woman in a puppet show scene. The assistant director noticed on her résumé that she was a Vietnamese traditional stage performer and mentioned that Gomes was looking for culturally specific music from the Vietnam setting, circa 1917.

In the film, as the character Molly recalls her travels across Asia, her memories of Vietnam include a domestic worker humming a song while doing chores.

Linh Huyen suggested Da co hoai lang, a foundational song in the Vietnamese vong co tradition. Instead of appearing as a background extra, she was invited to the set to record the folk song.

After her impromptu performance, Miguel Gomes embraced her and said she had made him cry. Huyen responded: “It wasn’t me - it was the soul of my people that moved you.”

For Linh Huyen, contributing to Grand Tour was not only an artistic honor - it fulfilled a lifelong mission: to share traditional Vietnamese music with global audiences.

A song that shaped an award-winning film

Grand Tour, directed by Miguel Gomes, won Best Director at Cannes 2024 and continued its winning streak across international film festivals. It earned the Silver Hugo for Best Direction and Best Editing at the Chicago International Film Festival, the José Salcedo Award for Best Editing at Valladolid, and took home Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing at Portugal’s Prémios Sophia. It also won the Grande Otelo Award for Best Ibero-American Film from the Brazilian Film Academy.

The film was selected as Portugal’s official submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars.

Set in the early 20th century, Grand Tour follows Edward, a British colonial officer in Asia, who flees just before his wedding. His fiancée, Molly, refuses to accept his disappearance and sets out to find him - resulting in a poetic chase that spans Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and beyond.

Through two parallel journeys - Edward’s flight and Molly’s pursuit - the film weaves a tale of longing, loss, and memory, much like the mournful refrain of Da co hoai lang.

Gia Bao