Borrowing the words of Walt Whitman, Viet and Nam is a vast work that contains multitudes. The coal mines of Vietnam’s Central Highlands become the backdrop for what is, at first glance, a queer love story, and on a deeper level, a metaphorical journey from darkness to light, from repression and secrecy to emancipation. Through Nam and Viet, two young workers in love, we delve into the depths of a story where past and present, pain and love, the individual and the community all coexist. The scars of war and the ghosts of what we cannot let go of appear in a fiction that, nevertheless, emphasizes the need to revisit historical memory. Trương Minh Quý’s third feature film defies boundaries in every possible way, from its production model, a co-production between seven countries that has withstood industry and censorship hurdles, to its narrative, which affirms the plurality of identities in a country marked by exile and migration. The film’s poetic, hypnotic visual language creates a space where the line between dreaming and wakefulness is blurred, a feeling reinforced by the decision not to tie each protagonist to a fixed name but rather to make them a fluid, shared entity. Ultimately, Viet and Nam speaks of a specific geographic reality while simultaneously transcending into a universal, timeless discourse. At its core, it is a film about what makes us human: the tension between life and death, belonging and uprootedness, becoming one with another. And above all, the search for freedom, the kind that only love in its purest form can grant. Daniela Urzola