Summer School, 2001 (2025)
There's a shot early in Summer School, 2001 that stopped me in my tracks. A Vietnamese family, working a market stall somewhere in Czechia, quietly going about the business of survival. Counterfeit goods, careful eyes, the kind of low-level hustle that keeps a family fed. It's an image you simply don't see in cinema very often, and director Dužan Duong renders it with such an authentic, unfussy confidence that you immediately know you're in good hands. I caught this one as part of my press duties for the Raindance Film Festival 2026, and it's one of the films that's genuinely stuck with me.
The historical footnote matters here too. Summer School, 2001 is the very first Viet-Czech co-production, and even if it were merely competent, that would be worth celebrating. The fact that it's considerably more than competent makes it a proper landmark. Duong is shining a light on a community that cinema has almost entirely overlooked, the Vietnamese diaspora navigating life in Central Europe, and he does so with a filmmaker's eye rather than a documentarian's instinct. This feels lived-in rather than studied.
The structure is deliberately episodic, told across three distinct perspectives: the hardworking father, played with real quiet dignity by Đoàn Hoàng Anh; the youngest son Tai, brought to life by Tô Tiến Tài; and the eldest son Kien, played by Bùi Thế Dương. If you're thinking that sounds like it risks becoming fragmented or cold, you'd be wrong. Duong is patient with his audience, building warmth and context before he starts pulling at the threads. The revelations come gradually, and he earns them. You find yourself piecing together the family dynamics the way you would with people you've just met, slowly understanding what's unspoken between them, what's been buried under years of shared struggle. The soundtrack plays a real part in this too, something genuinely emotive running underneath the quieter scenes, never overdoing it, just keeping the emotional current alive.
It's the kind of family drama I find myself gravitating towards more and more. Something like My Daughter's Hair (2025) covered similar territory for me, that idea of a family unit held together by sacrifice and silence, and Summer School, 2001 sits comfortably in that same conversation. These are films that respect the audience enough not to explain everything.
Where I do have some honest reservations: the mother is almost entirely absent from the narrative, and that absence feels like a genuine gap rather than a deliberate artistic choice. A family of three men and a market stall is compelling, but the void where a maternal perspective might have lived does leave the family dynamic feeling slightly lopsided. And while Kien's storyline is the one that pulls hardest at you emotionally, it doesn't really land anywhere definitive by the end. A few threads are left dangling in a way that feels less like intentional ambiguity and more like the script ran out of road. It's not fatal, but it nudges the film just short of being something truly special.
Still, these are genuinely minor complaints against a film that's doing something rare and doing it well. Duong has a sharp eye for human detail, for the small gestures that communicate volumes, and for the dignity of people living at the economic margins without ever making them feel like subjects to be pitied. The performances throughout feel honest rather than performed, and that authenticity is what carries you through the slower passages.
Three and a half stars.
Summer School, 2001 is a refreshing, culturally significant debut. It's smart, engaging, and genuinely compassionate about a community that has been largely invisible on screen. Whatever rough edges it has, Duong has put Viet-Czech cinema on the map, and I'll be watching whatever he does next.
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Klassiki
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Klassiki
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Raindance Film Festival: 1001 Frames (2025), Dead Dogs Don't Bite (2026), My Daughter's Hair (2025), Nameless (2026), Silent Rebellion (2025)
More from the 2020s: Look Back (2024), The Whale (2022), All That's Left of You (2025)
