Việt Nam is making a habit of showing up in Tokyo. For the second year running, the Việt Nam Film Development Association (VFDA) has opened a national Film Pavilion at TIFFCOM, the content market that runs alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival. This year's edition kicked off on October 28 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Centre, with Vietnamese officials, producers and local leaders in attendance.

The pitch is straightforward: Việt Nam wants to be a place where international films get made, not just watched. VFDA chairwoman Ngô Phương Lan said the goal is to guarantee Vietnamese cinema and the country itself a permanent annual presence at TIFF and TIFFCOM, funded by pulling together resources from localities, businesses and partners.

Three themes anchor the pavilion this year. The first is the fifth Đà Nẵng Asian Film Festival (DANAFF), which continues to serve as a regional meeting point for filmmakers. The second is the Production Attraction Index, a measure of how welcoming the country is to film crews. The third — and the one most relevant to anyone who travels for scenery — is a collection of filming location imagery from Quảng Ninh, Đà Nẵng and Hải Phòng.

Those locations read like a highlights reel of the Vietnamese coast. Quảng Ninh brings seascapes, islands, limestone karsts and, of course, Hạ Long Bay. Hải Phòng offers port districts, urban textures, islands and coastal stretches. Đà Nẵng is positioned as the all-rounder, with enough variety of settings to host productions of any genre or scale. Local officials from Quảng Ninh and Hải Phòng travelled to Tokyo specifically to pair the scenery pitch with practical talk about production conditions.

The pavilion is also a shop window for new Vietnamese projects. Among them is the animated feature The Secret Classroom: Comet Race (Lớp Học Mật Ngữ: Cuộc Đua Sao Chổi), directed by Nguyễn Phi Phi Anh and co-produced with Dee Dee Studio, with CGV on board as strategic distribution partner. VFDA rounds out its programme with a seminar titled Vietnamese Cinema in a Connected Asia, examining how Vietnamese films can keep their cultural identity while chasing co-productions and overseas markets.

TIFFCOM itself is one of Asia's biggest content markets: 322 exhibitors and close to 4,600 participants from 46 countries and territories this year, all negotiating rights and lining up international co-productions.

Why does this matter to travellers? Because screen tourism follows the camera. The same locations being marketed to producers — the limestone bay, the beach city, the port town — are the ones likely to appear on cinema and streaming screens in the next few years, and destinations that court film crews tend to invest in the access, hotels and infrastructure that make them easier for regular visitors to enjoy too. — Vietnam News Life