Screening: “Three Seasons” (1999) With Tony Bui

Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered. Please note that access will not be permitted 15 minutes after the start of the event.

This event will be held in English. The film will be screened in Vietnamese with English subtitles. The discussion that follows will be held in English.

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Winner of three major awards at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, including the Grand Jury Prize, Three Seasons offers a poetic and deeply human portrait of Vietnam at a crossroads, exploring the intersections of tradition and modernity, memory and identity against the backdrop of a rapidly changing society.

Following the screening, Tony Bui, filmmaker and professor at Columbia University, will be joined by two distinguished members of Asia Society France: Mai Tran, art patron and member of the Bureau, and Jia Jiawei, award-winning screenwriter based in France.

Together, they will explore the power of cinema to tell stories across cultures and generations, reflect on the legacies of history, and offer new perspectives on contemporary Asian identities. 

Set against the bustling backdrop of post-war Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), “Three Seasons” weaves together four distinct stories, exploring themes of love, loss, hope and change as the characters deal with the remnants of war and the onslaught of westernization.

A young girl, hired to work a lotus pond, comes to the aid of a reclusive master. A cyclo driver becomes obsessed with an ambitious prostitute connected to wealthy foreign clients. A young boy hustles lighters, gum, and cheap watches on the streets. And an American Vietnam vet searches for the daughter he never knew. 

The disparate, intertwining lives struggle to find identity, human connection, and meaning in a country caught in between its dark past and its uncertain future.

Watch the trailer

Tony Bui is a Sundance award-winning writer, director, producer, and educator. He served as Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute and teaches in Columbia’s School of the Arts graduate film program. He is the founding director of Viet Arts in Action (VAiA), a Columbia initiative that advances cross-cultural dialogue through cinema and the arts. His feature debut, Three Seasons, made history at the Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award, and Best Cinematography Award. The film received two Independent Spirit Award nominations and was selected as Viet Nam’s official submission to the Academy Awards, where it was shortlisted. In 2024, it returned to Sundance as one of ten films selected for the festival’s 40th-anniversary celebration. 

Bui is a recipient of the Humanitas Prize and an alumnus of the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting and Directing Labs. He has written and developed projects for HBO, Warner Bros., and NBC. Through his work at Columbia, Bui has developed programs bringing together filmmakers, artists, journalists, and cultural thinkers to explore storytelling, cultural memory, and the role of the arts in shaping how societies understand themselves. In 2025, he curated Legacies of War: Viet Nam Across the Divides for the Criterion Channel, bringing together American and Vietnamese films to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Viet Nam.

In 2026, he co-launched the DANAFF Script Lab, Viet Nam’s first week-long screenwriting lab, bringing internationally acclaimed filmmakers to Viet Nam to mentor emerging Vietnamese filmmakers. Most recently, Bui served as Artistic Director of A Life in Cinema, a live cine-concert at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in New York featuring the Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra in its first public appearance in New York. The program traced the story of Viet Nam through scenes from across its cinema, accompanied by live orchestral performance. Bui previously served on the Board of Directors of Film Independent. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of the New York Asian Film Festival and the Global Advisory Board of Fulbright University Viet Nam.

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This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.

Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.