A Vietnamese Director’s Second Feature Has Quietly Become Locarno’s Hottest Property

Vietnamese director Lê Bảo's second feature, Hearing (Thính Giác), has been picked up by the Athens-based sales outfit Heretic for worldwide rights ahead of its International Competition screening at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival, Variety reported on 15 July 2026. A clip from the film released alongside the deal marks Heretic's earliest move into a Southeast Asian title this year, and its first Vietnamese competition title since the company expanded its Asian catalogue in 2024.

Heretic's acquisition, struck before Hearing unspools on the Swiss lakeside at Locarno's 6 August competition lineup, says more about how arthouse titles from Vietnam now travel than about any individual film. Vietnamese cinema has spent two decades punching above its weight on the festival circuit. The recent question is whether the commercial side of the ecosystem has caught up. Heretic's pre-competition pickup is an attempt to answer yes.

The deal, and what it actually changes

Heretic will handle world sales on Hearing, with Variety reporting the deal alongside a first clip from the picture. The company did not disclose territory splits, minimum guarantees, or recoupment terms. Industry standard for a competition title sold this early usually means a short festival window of exclusivity for the agent: no other territory locks before Locarno's awards are handed out on 8 August.

For Lê Bảo, the arrangement is the clearest indication yet that his follow-up has the institutional weight of a serious international rollout. His debut, Tree of Heaven (2019), moved through Hanoi-based distribution rather than a dedicated sales agent. Hearing, by contrast, arrives in Locarno's main competition with a Greek broker attached.

The wider Vietnamese-festival pipeline

Vietnamese titles have been a fixture on the European festival circuit since the late 2000s. Tran Anh Hung's Palme d'Or win for The Scent of Green Papaya in 1993 established a precedent; the so-called "Dàn film" wave of the 2010s kept the rhythm going. What has changed, slowly, is the back end.

Independent Vietnamese producers have traditionally struggled to convert festival attention into downstream sales. Theatrical windows in Vietnam remain narrow; international sales agents have been reluctant to take titles from Ho Chi Minh City- and Hanoi-based production houses without a festival-circuit proof point. Heretic's wager on Hearing before that proof point exists at Locarno short-circuits that caution. It also suggests that Heretic, founded in 2011 and known for representing the work of Yorgos Lanthimos and his Greek circle, sees Vietnam as a territory worth pre-buying.

Counterpoint is owed: this is one title, one agent, one festival calendar. A single Locarno pre-buy is not a pipeline. The structural change it implies could easily stall depending on how Hearing is received on the night and whether the eight-day Locarno run produces the sort of buyer interest that produces the next acquisition.

What Locarno’s competition lineup signals

Locarno’s International Competition has historically been a launchpad for European and Latin American arthouse work. Its programming in recent editions has tilted incrementally toward East and Southeast Asia. Hearing sits inside that drift, alongside titles from the Philippines and Indonesia in this year's sidebar sections.

The festival runs from 6 to 15 August 2026. Awards are scheduled for the closing night. Heretic's release strategy will depend on whether Hearing takes the Pardo d'Oro or any of the competition's secondary prizes; a clean competition run without an award can still produce meaningful sales on the strength of critical reception alone.

For Heretic, the bet is straightforward: attach early to a young Vietnamese director with a debut credit strong enough to demand a Locarno competition slot, and ride the festival into territory sales before competitors enter. The pattern is familiar from the company's handling of early Lanthimos and the work of Greek New Wave peers. Applying it to Vietnam is the news here.

What remains uncertain

Several moving parts will resolve only after Locarno. First, Hearing's reception across its two press screenings will shape whether buyers in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan step in with offers. Second, the reception of Lê Bảo's prior work in festival retrospectives has not been disclosed in detail; the Variety report does not address how prior Vietnamese distributors view the title. Third, the price Heretic has paid for the rights and the contractual structure remain undisclosed, which makes any judgment on the deal's market significance a matter of inference rather than fact.

Desk note: Monexus treats this dispatch as a market-structure story rather than a critic's-eye review. The clip and Variety's exclusive carry the procurement signal, that Vietnam-to-Europe festival traffic now has a credible young agent willing to commit pre-festival, and the editorial line follows that signal rather than attempting to evaluate the picture itself.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locarno_Film_Festival