Love In Vietnam: This Cross-Cultural Romance Revives A 1940s Literary Classic

A Punjabi man falling in love with a Vietnamese woman is not your typical love story, but Rahhat Shah Kazmi's film, Love in Vietnam, makes it happen. When the filmmaker decided to adapt Sabahattin Ali’s, Madonna in a Fur Coat, one of the most beloved novels of the 20th century, he was not drawn by nostalgia alone. What compelled him was the novel’s emotional relevance, a reminder that great storytelling refuses to age.

Love in Vietnam is a charming cross-cultural romantic drama that resists the cliché boy-meets-girl script and unfolds more like a slow, lyrical meditation on love, longing, and honesty. 

The film is gentle rather than grand, introspective rather than performative, and deeply rooted in feeling. It reimagines the 1943 classic story for a contemporary, global audience.

The film’s cross-cultural canvas is integral to its storytelling. Shot extensively across Vietnam and India, the locations function as social and emotional landscapes.

Love in Vietnam is abundant in rich talent, starring Shantanu Maheshwari, Avneet Kaur, Kha Ngan, Farida Jalal, Raj Babbar, and others. It is co-written by Kritika Rampal.

Since its release, Love in Vietnam has made a significant mark on the international stage. At the Seoul Global Movie Awards 2025, it was named Best Asian Film, while Rahhat won Best Director of Asia.

In an interview with SheThePeople, Rahhat Shah Kazmi reflects on the film's themes of borderless love and the responsibility of representing cultures with honesty and sensitivity.

Rahhat Shah Kazmi in conversation with SheThePeople

SheThePeople: What drew you to adapt Madonna in a Fur Coat into a contemporary story?

Rahhat: Madonna in a Fur Coat is a classic novel and remains one of the world’s most loved books even today. What really attracted me to it is how relevant the story still feels.

At its heart, it is about love, and love is something that connects everyone across countries, languages, and cultures. Love doesn’t understand boundaries, and that universality really stayed with me.

When my co-writer Kritika Rampal told me about the novel, I was immediately intrigued. Once I read it, I fell completely in love with the story. At that time, I was already planning to make a film in Vietnam, and suddenly, everything felt aligned.

The idea of a love story set across two countries, with different cultures and a language barrier, felt like the perfect contemporary adaptation of the novel. That’s when I knew I wanted to bring this story to the screen.

SheThePeople: How did you reinterpret the novel’s emotional core while making it accessible to a modern, global audience?

Rahhat: The emotional core of the novel is timeless. This is not a story that belongs to one era or one place. It’s a universal story about love and longing, emotions that every human being understands, regardless of age or geography.

While adapting it, we redesigned the characters and placed them within two very different cultures, but the soul of the story remained the same. We wanted to showcase the beauty of Punjab and its culture, especially how relationships and emotional bonds work there.

The story follows a young man from Punjab who is almost engaged to his childhood friend. She loves him deeply, but he is unsure about his own feelings.

When he travels to Vietnam, he falls in love with a painting and later meets the woman from that painting in real life. That’s where the real emotional conflict begins.

He doesn’t want to hurt anyone or cheat anyone. He is very honest about his feelings. But then the woman he truly loves suddenly disappears, and his journey to find her completely transforms him.

At the same time, the Indian girl makes a huge emotional sacrifice and supports him in finding the woman he loves. The ending has an unexpected twist, which I’ll leave for the audience to discover.

SheThePeople: How did you balance Indian and Vietnamese cultural sensitivities without leaning into stereotypes?

Rahhat: That was definitely one of the biggest challenges, because both cultures are very different. Since I am Indian and deeply connected to Punjabi culture, that part came naturally to me.

For Vietnam, we worked closely with Vietnamese script doctors, including Tung Vu, who is a very successful producer. She helped us ensure authenticity in terms of language, behaviour, and cultural nuances.

I also travelled to Vietnam many times before making the film. I spent time with locals, observed their lifestyle, and tried to truly understand their way of thinking. Our intention was always to stay away from stereotypes and tell a story that felt organic and real.

When the film premiered in Da Nang, the audience was deeply moved. We saw similar reactions in Korea and later at the grand premiere in Vietnam. People connected emotionally with the film, and that was very reassuring for us as filmmakers.

SheThePeople: How did Love in Vietnam reshape your own understanding of romance and cinema?

Rahhat: Every film is a learning process. As a filmmaker and writer, you experience all the emotions first, even before the audience does.

When you write happy scenes, you feel that joy. When you write scenes about longing, separation, or sacrifice, those emotions stay with you. Sometimes they become overwhelming and take time to settle.

Love in Vietnam is very soft, subtle, and deeply emotional. Many people there described our film as an “impossible love story,” and that perspective really stayed with me. It made me rethink how romance can be portrayed on screen in a quieter, more heartfelt way.

SheThePeople: What role do silence and stillness play in the film?

Rahhat: Silence plays a very important role in the film. I strongly believe that emotions often exist between the lines, not just in dialogues.

A scene is shaped not by the person speaking, but by the person reacting. Silence gives space to emotions and allows the audience to truly connect with the characters’ inner lives.

If everything is loud all the time, it becomes exhausting. Silence gives the audience breathing space, and that balance is essential in storytelling.

SheThePeople: What kind of stories do you believe Indian cinema should tell to strengthen its global presence?

Rahhat: India is an incredibly rich country in terms of culture, languages, history, and mythology. We have an endless treasure of stories.

I strongly feel that Indian cinema should focus more on rooted stories from our own culture instead of trying to imitate Hollywood. Western cinema comes from a very different cultural space.

We’ve seen time and again that deeply rooted Indian stories resonate globally. We should adapt more stories from Hindi, Urdu, and regional literature, as well as our folk tales. Films like Kantara prove how powerful such stories can be.

Our culture is expressive, emotional, and vibrant. Our films can be loud or quiet, fast or slow, it all depends on the story. But at the core, Indian cinema should proudly tell Indian stories.