Vietnamese veteran movie director Dang Nhat Minh has been granted theKim Dae-jung Nobel Peace Film Award at the recent Gwangju InternationalFilm Festival in the Republic of Korea.

The 75-year-oldfilm maker received the award from the chairwoman of the Kim Dae-jungPeace Centre, Lee Hee-ho, who is also the widow of the late presidentand 2000 Nobel winner Kim Dae-jung.

Launched in 2011, theaward aims to encourage film makers who deal with human rights, peace,freedom and the value of nature.

Minh has gained aninternational reputation as a director well versed in expressing socialcontradictions from the perspective of the poor or underprivilegedthrough films on the American War.

Born in 1938 in Hue ,he began making documentary films in 1965. His 1984 feature movie BaoGio Cho Den Thang Muoi (When the Tenth Month Comes) is the firstpost-war Vietnamese movie to be shown at international film festivalsand was named one of the 18 best Asian films by the US Cable NewsNetwork (CNN) in 2008.

The movie, together with another ofhis cinematographic works, Thuong Nho Dong Que (Nostalgia for theCountryside, 1995), were screened at the Gwangju Film Festival andreceived warmly by Koran audiences.
One of his latest works,Dung Dot (Don’t Burn, 2009), based on a diary written by liberationarmy doctor Dang Thuy Tram during the most violent period of the warfrom 1968 to 1970, won the audience prize at the 19 th annual FukuokaFilm Festival in 2009.

The movie was also Vietnam’s entry into the Academy Awards’ Foreign Language Film category in the same year.

Thanks to his great contribution to Vietnam ’s cinema, Minh was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Award in 2007.-VNA