The U.S.-Vietnam family drama, starring veteran Vietnamese actress Kieu Chinh, has earned five honors at the Los Angeles Tribune International Film Festival and drew an emotional response during special screenings in Saigon and Hanoi ahead of its April 2027 U.S. premiere.
LOS ANGELES, CA — The WS Productions film Chrysalis, a U.S.-Vietnam family drama inspired by artist Sir Daniel K. Winn’s childhood, opened in Vietnam on Sept. 11 to a positive response from critics and audiences ahead of its April 2027 U.S. premiere, presented by the Beverly Hills Film Festival.
Vietnamese coverage has highlighted the restrained performances of Kieu Chinh and Uy Nhan and the film’s intimate portrayal of family, memory and separation. ELLE Vietnam singled out the conviction of their grandmother-grandson interplay. Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam wrote that the film’s first theatrical screening left a lasting impression through the film’s understated, emotionally resonant treatment of family, roots and intergenerational memory.
During its opening week, the film held an 8.2 average from 211 ticket-holder reviews on MoMo, a Vietnamese ticketing platform. A Sept. 11 Kenh14 report, citing Box Office Vietnam data, placed the film at No. 4 in a daily box-office snapshot.
Directed by J. Robert Schulz from a screenplay by Andrew Creme, Chrysalis follows young Daniel’s coming-of-age journey in 1975 Saigon and the bond with his grandmother, Bà Nội, which anchors the story. Kieu Chinh stars as Bà Nội. Uy Nhan portrays Daniel as a child, while Winn appears in the present-day storyline.
The Vietnam opening brought the U.S.-Vietnam production to audiences in the country where its story is set. The film opened locally as Mãi Nợ Một Lời Tạm Biệt, rendered in English as The Farewell I Never Gave. Its international title remains Chrysalis. The film also stars Samuel An, Lan Thy, Le Anh Huy, Tien Pham and Trinh Tu Trung. WS Productions produced the film.
WS Productions elected to make the Vietnam run a special, limited theatrical engagement, allowing audiences in the country that shaped Winn’s early life to see the film before its planned U.S. premiere in April 2027.
For Dr. Emily Letran, President and Co-Founder of the Los Angeles Tribune International Film Festival, the Vietnam screenings became much more than another stop in the film’s journey. Letran traveled to Vietnam to celebrate the film’s success and personally present young actor Uy Nhan with his LATIFF trophy during the special screenings in Saigon and Hanoi.
The response was immediate.
The theaters were packed, with three to five screens filled on each event night. In Hanoi, audiences came despite the rain. In Ho Chi Minh City, they navigated the city’s famously intense traffic to be there. Inside the theaters, there were tears and laughter, sometimes only moments apart. The emotion was raw and authentic, and after the screenings, many audience members wanted to stay, talk and share what the story had awakened in them.
“I personally led two little girls by the hands—immediate fans—to come up and take a photo with ‘Uncle Daniel,’” Letran recalled. “Even Daniel Winn was crying as he spoke about the emotions of retelling his story. It was my absolute honor to witness the success of the movie in real time, back in the motherland, the country where we were born.”
That homecoming gave the film another dimension. While Chrysalis is rooted in Winn’s personal history and in Vietnam, its images of home speak to something much more universal.
“Anyone watching this movie can have those same nostalgic feelings about home,” Letran said. “It may be their bustling city, or it may be their countryside with rice fields, a dirt road and a river flowing through a village. The place may be different, but that feeling of remembering where we came from is something almost everyone understands.”
That connection could be heard in the reactions of Vietnamese moviegoers. Some spoke not simply about the filmmaking but about memories of their own grandparents, mothers, childhood homes and farewells that were never properly said.
One audience member described the emotional impact of the grandmother-grandson relationship:
“I truly struggle to find the right words to fully describe this film, as it is, at its core, a pure story about the bond between a grandmother and her grandson. Amidst the abject poverty of that era—where deprivation was everywhere—the grandmother’s love for little Den became the warmest, most steadfast anchor.
“The moment Den had to part ways with his grandmother, my heart sank completely, and tears fell unbidden. The cruelty of their circumstances rendered that love both immense and heartbreakingly helpless.
“I always try to open my heart to understand and empathize with the lives of those around me, yet sitting before the big screen, it was the tenderness of this grandmother-grandson bond that reached out to soothe and heal my own soul.
“Watch this film to slow down a little and learn to cherish companionship while you still can; life is fleeting, after all—don’t let yourself be haunted in the end by the regret of owing someone a proper farewell.”
Another Vietnamese audience review reflected on the film’s beauty and the quiet way it portrays the consequences of war. Translated into English, the reviewer wrote:
“Mãi Nợ Một Lời Tạm Biệt is a beautiful film—not only beautiful in its imagery and sound, and beautiful in its cinematic perspective, but beautiful in its emotions as well. No matter how strong you may be, I fear you will still shed tears over the heartbreaking story of a grandmother and her grandson, a mother who sacrifices for her son’s family, and memories filled with tears for those who have reached adulthood.
“The film is set during wartime, but it does not choose to portray war in a violent or overwhelming way. Instead, it tells its story through very small things: a home, a family meal, little Den’s mischievous adventures, and his grandmother’s loving care. Precisely because these moments are so peaceful, when separation finally comes, the pain cuts even deeper.
“Through these simple images—a family living in poverty during wartime, a family torn apart—those with enough life experience will recognize the wounds that war leaves behind, expressed through the film’s gentle and poetic cinematic language.
“The relationship between little Den and his grandmother is portrayed with extraordinary simplicity and sincerity. There is no need for grand speeches or excessive explanation. Simply seeing the two of them together is enough to understand. The film captures exactly the feeling that so many of us wrestle with: the person we love the most can also be the person we are most afraid of losing.
“Kieu Chinh is outstanding as the grandmother. It is not simply her gestures or the way she carries herself. There is something very special in her eyes—the warmth of a grandmother combined with what feels like an entire sky filled with memories. Watching her, I felt compassion for the character, but I also found myself remembering my own grandmother and my own mother. The tears of a grown man simply kept falling.”
Those reactions speak to why the story is connecting beyond the historical circumstances in which it takes place. At its heart, Chrysalis is not simply a film about a particular period in Vietnam. It is about family, childhood, sacrifice, memory, separation and the people whose love becomes part of us long after circumstances pull us apart.
The film’s Vietnam reception follows growing international recognition.
Chrysalis made its market debut at the 2026 Marché du Film in Cannes, where it held two market screenings. At DANAFF IV, Kieu Chinh received the Screen Excellence Merit Award for her screen career spanning nearly seven decades and more than 100 roles.
At the Los Angeles Tribune International Film Festival (LATIFF), Chrysalis received five honors:
- Best Feature Film
- Best Director — J. Robert Schulz
- Best Actress — Kieu Chinh
- Best Child Actor — Uy Nhan
- Best Orchestral Score for Motion Picture — Elia Cmiral
At nine years old, Uy Nhan became LATIFF’s inaugural Best Child Actor and one of the youngest documented Vietnamese recipients of a U.S. film-festival acting award.
For Letran, bringing Uy Nhan’s trophy back to Vietnam carried particular meaning. It allowed an award presented by an international film festival in Los Angeles to return to the young Vietnamese actor whose performance helped give the story its emotional center—and allowed that recognition to be celebrated with audiences in both Saigon and Hanoi.
But perhaps the most important measure of the film’s success could not be captured by awards, reviews or box-office numbers. It was visible in the theaters themselves: audiences sitting together, laughing at little Den’s childhood adventures, crying as grandmother and grandson faced separation, and remaining afterward because they wanted to talk about what they had just experienced.
For Winn, returning to Vietnam with a film drawn from his own childhood meant confronting those memories again alongside an audience. His tears during the discussions underscored the deeply personal nature of the story being shown on screen.
For audiences, however, his story often became their story.
A grandmother became their grandmother. A mother became their mother. A childhood home became their home. A dirt road, a river, a meal shared by a family or the noise of a crowded city became a doorway back into their own memories.
That may ultimately be where Chrysalis finds its most universal voice: in reminding audiences that although our countries, cities, villages and histories may be different, the longing for home—and the desire for one more moment with someone we love—needs little translation.
The April 2027 U.S. premiere, presented by the Beverly Hills Film Festival, will coincide with the 52nd anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam. It will introduce the film’s story of family, displacement and remembrance to U.S. audiences while building on its powerful Vietnam response.
ABOUT “CHRYSALIS”
Chrysalis is a U.S.-Vietnam family drama inspired by the early life of Vietnamese-American artist Sir Daniel K. Winn. The film is directed by J. Robert Schulz and stars Kieu Chinh as Bà Nội, the grandmother whose love gives young Daniel stability amid the upheaval of 1975 Saigon.
What began as one man’s memory is increasingly revealing itself as something much larger: a story about the people and places we carry with us, the goodbyes we never forget—and the enduring meaning of home.
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