Hà Nội is about to get a cinema overload. The eighth Hà Nội International Film Festival (HANIFF VIII) runs from November 28 to December 2 under the banner "Cinema – Connection – Development," and this year's edition is designed less as a screenings-only showcase and more as a working meeting point for the international film industry.
The headline addition is the Việt Nam Film & Television Market (VFM), running November 28–30. Organisers want it to be a genuine deal-making floor: producers, distributors, investors and streaming or TV content companies meeting face to face to trade copyrights, set up co-productions and push Vietnamese films abroad. GLOEX, the event partner with 14 years of experience running content-industry trade fairs alongside TELEFILM Vietnam, is targeting around 200 booths and more than 100 firms and brands from 15 countries and territories. Đặng Trần Cường, who heads the Cinema Department at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, has been blunt about why: Vietnamese cinema needs a professional market that links creators with buyers, not just a festival that screens films.
The timing makes sense. Vietnamese cinema had a strong 2025 — box office of roughly VNĐ6.14 trillion (about US$236 million) on more than 70 million tickets, with local films taking around 62 percent of the market across 55 releases. But 2026 has cooled: independent tracker Box Office Vietnam put Vietnamese film revenue at about VNĐ2.91 trillion through end-September, well behind the VNĐ3.852 trillion notched up over the same stretch of 2025. Festival organisers argue the real money — international sales, streaming rights, TV deals and IP development — lies beyond the ticket window, and building that ecosystem is what VFM is meant to accelerate.
For travellers, the practical upshot: expect a lively late-November stretch in Hà Nội packed with screenings, industry events and a busier-than-usual cultural calendar. If you time a city break to the festival dates, you can catch a programme of international films, and venues and hotels around town will feel the buzz. November is also one of Hà Nội's most pleasant months — cool, dry, autumn-light days when street food and lakeside walks are at their best.
Even if film festivals aren't your usual draw, this is a signal of where Hà Nội is heading: a city working hard to position itself as Southeast Asia's next content-industry hub, with the visitor-facing festival as its shop window. Ngô Phương Lan, chairwoman of the Việt Nam Film Development Association, cautions that the country still lacks large studios and the connective tissue of a mature film economy — which is exactly what organisers hope VFM will start to fix. Whether those five November days produce lasting partnerships, she notes, is the real test.
Vietnam News Life
