Friday One Sheet: MOTHER SAIGON (Má Sài Gòn)

Quebec/Vietnamese filmmaker Khoa Lê's documents a portrait of the LGBTQ+ in modern Vietnam in Má Sài Gòn (Mother Saigon). The hazy orange and pink key art offers its own kind of public intimacy, and sends out a strong core visual on intensity of the human experience. The film is a love letter to a city that is as liberating as it is oppressive. This is distilled beautifully into this minimal image.

Designer Louis Paquet makes strong use of soft, hazy LED lights, and keeps the central figure in ecstatic shadow. This is an interesting choice to invite any onlooker to lean in and look closer. I love the placement of the director's credit above the right shoulder. Festival laurels aside, the sizeable, but elegant serif font seems to caress the subject of the photo in the same way that both the light bathes them, and they themselves hold on to themselves.