Hearing

Official Selection, 2026 Locarno Film Festival
Official Selection, 2026 Busan International Film Festival

Ninh works as a mechanic that installs decibel meters, juggling his lingering feelings about his ex-wife, his ailing mother, and his detached father in the countryside. The people surrounding Ninh are disturbingly quiet, and so is he. Something furious and outrageous is bubbling below the unspoken silence, with resentment quietly building until explosive emotions can no longer be contained.

As HEARING jumps between scenes of implied incest, extreme violence, and unhinged pleasure, the film urges the audience to look, listen, and feel. From loud restaurants, quiet home spaces, cacophonic shops, to silent neighborhoods, Lê Bảo keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, listening and exploring joy, grief, and resentment in sequences that are beautiful, curious, and uncanny.

After his controversial debut feature Taste (2021), director Lê Bảo returns with HEARING’s poetic, disturbing slow cinema, tackling big questions with unsettling nonchalance primarily through sound and cinematography filled with subdued earthy tones and blaring neon lights.

Part horror story, part theatrical melodrama, HEARING’s surrealist acting, subtle sound, and color invite an eerie sensory buffet that places the audience at the heart of loneliness, (un)familiarity, and desire.

– Linh-Ngọc Bùi