NYFF 2025: “Hair, Paper, Water…” is a Gentle Masterpiece
Home means something different to everyone. A home can be a physical structure, a person, a place, a feeling, or some intangible combination of all those things. In Trương Minh Quý and Nicolas Graux’s film, Hair, Paper, Water…, the co-directors gently explore what home means to a Vietnamese family. The film, which had its North American premiere at the 2025 New York Film Festival, centers on the matriarch of the family. An observational documentary odyssey, unassuming at first glance, Hair, Paper, Water… is much more than meets the eye.
Mrs. Hậu was born in a cave over sixty years ago. In the time since, she’s had many children who have grown to have children of their own. Mrs. Hậu left her cave years ago for life in a village, but feels the pull of the old place daily. Hair, Paper, Water… doesn’t follow Mrs. Hậu as her life is working toward a specific goal. Instead, it nestles the viewer into the life of Mrs. Hậu and her family as they go about their days. What unites each of the snippets of the documentary is Mrs. Hậu’s Ruc language lessons. Ruc is an endangered language primarily spoken by hunter-gatherers in the Tuyên Hóa district of the Quảng Bình province. The Ruc people’s hunter-gatherer lifestyle ended in the 1970s when the Vietnamese government relocated them to a sedentary village. Throughout the film, Ruc words appear on the screen in a vibrant red over an image that is the definition of the word.
courtesy of NYFF
Hair, Paper, Water… is unobtrusive. Trương and Graux used a 16mm Bolex camera. One roll of film could capture three minutes in thirty-second increments. The result is a nostalgic, liminal movie that exists in a way that feels like time has no control over the actions of the people in the frame. We are painfully aware of the passage of time and of the sensation that life goes on forever. The Bolex camera Trương and Graux used can’t record audio, so Trương, along with Ernst Karel, recorded it separately. What they captured creates an emotional response in that the noises we’re hearing don’t always match the images we’re seeing. Hair, Paper, Water… is a spiritual experience that washes over the viewer to create an unconventionally informative work of documentary filmmaking.
Over the visual of a black screen, Mrs. Hậu says, ““Slowly…slowly…slowly…I grew up.” The film then cuts from that emptiness to Mrs. Hậu in all of her aged glory. The beauty of life is on full display in Hair, Paper, Water…. It’s a moving ode to the ways we interact with one another and the nature of the planet, but also how we communicate. How we put the love of each other and our home into a means of communication that can be understood far and wide. It’s a reminder that this Earth connects all of us, and it’s utterly magnificent. The 16mm richness and graininess are imperfect in the way that humans are. We make mistakes, experience unimaginable sorrow, and still have a chance of finding beauty in this world. Hair, Paper, Water… is remarkable in a simple way. In the way that we all find purpose and pain throughout life, but discover something to believe in every morning.
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