Irish Film Institute -EAFFI: THE RIVER THAT HOLDS OUR HANDS + Q&A

EAFFI: THE RIVER THAT HOLDS OUR HANDS + Q&A

Director: Jianhang Chen

85 mins, Hong Kong-China-Vietnam-Korea, 2025, Digital, Subtitled


(ONG6 A7 ONG6)

Jianhang Chen’s beautiful hybrid docufiction feature, set between Southeast Asia and southern China, is a poetic meditation on memory, migration, and intergenerational trauma within the Teochew diaspora. In Hong Kong, elderly Vietnamese woman Lam Po Wah, whose life has been shaped by displacement, dreams of returning to childhood scenes. In Ho Chi Minh City, documentarian Ah Wie, carrying Po Wah’s 70-year-old family photograph, searches for her long-lost home in Saigon. What connects ancestors, descendants, and the diaspora is the river of their homeland: ‘War may divide us, but only rivers and mountains recount the memories.’

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with producer Ziyang Lin.

Festival selection/awards: Official Selection, Busan International Film Festival 2025

Screening as part of East Asia Film Festival Ireland 2026

Book Tickets

Saturday 21st

}