Up and coming Vietnamese director Nguyễn Lê Hoàng Phúc attended the pots screening sharing of his film Bury Us in a Lone Desert at HKAFF.

He shared that the story is adapted from real life event. He was shocked when he first heard of the story 15 years ago. Death itself is sufficient of a taboo in daily life, let alone living with a dead. 10 years later, as he learnt that the old man, despite confined in a wheelchair, continued to delicately take care of the sculpture made from his late wife, his take on the incident was profoundly altered. He was acclaimed at the old man's devotion to love, hence, was motivated to adapt it into a movie.

Before entering the film industry, the director has been editing commercial productions. The experiences he has gained over the year honed his keen eye for cinematography, props, and framing. He shared that he was exposed to films of different genres when he was editing, therefore he also tried to incorporate different elements as he was editing. He started off with horror, explored humanistic themes, and concluded with Western motifs, enriching the film.

Unlike the commonly used square or rectangle frame, there are circular shots throughout the film. The shots are director's insight to framing. He believes that conventional rectangular compositions lend characters a cold, impersonal quality, whereas circular frames render them more tangible and help audiences feel the warmth of the narrative.

There aren't many dialogues between the characters, rather the narrative is propelled through action and behaviour. The director employed such approach to represent the distance between people when they first met, complementing the desert setting.

To render the film more realistic, the sculpture in the film are identical to the one in real life. The director shared that he didn't create a more refined one, rather, he believed the imperfectness and the handmade quality further reflect the sincerity of the old man and his profound, endless longing for his wife.

Speaking of casting, the director revealed that all actors have never acted before, the casting was also very random. For instance, the actor who played the old man was actually a security guard, spotted by the producer when he was getting his vaccine. He believes the performance of non-professional actors, without undertaking any acting training, are more sincere and possess greater emotional resonance. He also got along well with the actors during shooting, and refer to each other as father and son. He also granted the actors considerable freedom, hoping to make them feel at ease and enjoy the acting.