VietNamNet Bridge – The movie Lost in Paradise by director Vu Ngoc Dang will be screened at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival which will take place from February 9-19.

Dang's latest film is the first Vietnamese production to feature a positive view of homosexual life. It will be shown as part of the festival's Panorama category, for films courting controversial subjects such as violence and homosexuality, while portraying a special artistic effect.

The film gives prominence to humanity through two separate stories around people who are considered a lower class of society. The first depicts a love triangle between three gays. The second concerns a friendship between mentally-handicapped man with a prostitute. They have their own dreams, emotions and love, like others.

The film received critical acclaim and commercial success in Viet Nam, and has been shown at several international festivals from which it has garnered mixed reviews.

Lost in Paradise was screened at the Toronto film festival last year, then shown in Vancouver (Canada), and Pusan (South Korea). The Berlin Festival is the film's first venue in Europe.

In Viet Nam, the film won many prestigious awards, including Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Cameraman at the National Film Festival last year.

* VN horror film for US festivals

A Vietnamese horror film directed by Le Van Kiet, Ngoi Nha Trong Hem (The House in the Alley), has received invitations to join several US film festivals after its trailer was posted last month on the entertainment website the Internet Movie Database.

The festivals included New York's Tribecca Film Festival – one of the world's largest, which began in the wake of the September 11 attacks – as well as the Seattle International Film Festival and Houston's Fantastic Festival, which seeks horror films from around the world.

The film features Rebel and Clash star Ngo Thanh Van and Tran Bao Son, and is expected to be released on Valentine's Day.

The trailer appeared on the IMDb website after Twitchfilm, one of the world's leading websites for horror films, commented that people had forgotten the appeal of horror films as date movies.

Vietnamese writer-director Kiet will bring scary suspense to Viet Nam's screens on Valentine's Day in his latest feature.

"The freshly released trailer is raw in all the right ways, the dominantly handheld camera work dropping you right into the middle of the action and the atmosphere seems bang on," the Twitchfilm website said.

The film focuses on the tragic miscarriage a young couple endure, when after a long stint in hospital, the wife returns home and is tormented by the loss and begins acting strangely. Their house also undergoes a bizarre transformation. The husband, despite trying to help, becomes increasingly frantic, and when things get out of control, the couple are forced to fight together and find out what is happening to their house.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News