Viet and Nam

Nam and Việt love each other. Both are miners, working 1000 meters below ground, where danger awaits and darkness prevails. In the brief moments of respite, in the exhaustion of male bodies, they kiss. The town where they live makes a living out of coal. Nam’s mother collects coal waste from the mines to make briquettes at her makeshift workshop. Coal earns them a living, while polluting the land and the sea. Black sea. Black coal. Burnt coal. Wet coal. Dusty coal. Coal. Nam, like other young people, has decided to leave the country soon. In his village, many families get out of poverty thanks to the money they receive from relatives working abroad, most of them illegal immigrants — underground money. Through a relative, Nam gets in touch with an agent who can smuggle people abroad in containers. But at that moment, Nam’s father, a soldier who died in the war, comes back in his mother’s dreams to tell her where he died. One morning, in a coastal cave, Nam bleeds while Việt is entering him. Looking at the blood on his fingers, Nam tells Việt:  “I saw my father, a faceless man, when I was about to cum.” Nam, his mother and Việt go south to the old battlefield, following her dreams, to find the remains of his father.