Two parallel stories – a young couple and an old one – and a river that runs through them: in one, the guy heads to a monk temple in search of a cure for his insomnia; in the other, a dog meets its owner’s former lover near a hydroelectric power station. After “Blessed Land” (2019), also shown in competition at Curtas, filmmaker Pham Ngoc Lân, graduated in Architecture and Urbanism, returns his critical look towards the landscape, this time reflecting on the colossality of the dam, on the one hand, and of the temple itself, on the other. In “The Unseen River”, the two couples never cross paths, and the editing skips from one meeting to the other, with the river taking on the leading role. In the dialogs, dreaming is equated with taking a river bath, becoming like a state of transtemporal fluctuation that allows a return to the past – in a place of reunion with those who are gone – and to see the future. By focusing on the camera movements, of which the slow zooms are a stand-out, immersing the viewer in a dreamlike atmosphere, Lân explores the metaphorical relations between time, dream, and river. A river that symbolizes innocence and purity, but also the passage to death and the violence of nature. But this is the portrait of an “invisible” river: that of the vital flow, a river of flowing time. (AJM)