Writer/Director/Producer Trần Nhân Kiên and actress Minh Ngọc will be in attendance for Q&A after the screening.

Antithesis of Gemini has intense violence, mature themes, sexual assault, and nudity. Not intended for younger audiences.

Antithesis of Gemini begins with pageant queen Phong Linh (Tạ Lâm) narrating her unfortunate role in the myth of “the Auspicious Child”. She recounts the two greatest days of her life: the day she won her crown, and the day her husband died; bookending the tragic fairy tale about to unfold.

Immediately after, the film bluntly drops the viewer into Phong Linh’s sexual assault by her own husband, Cao Nhơn (Hồng Thanh), also the benefactor of the pageant. The act is, sadly, transactional: if she bears his child, he’ll fulfill a supernatural prophecy promising fortune and wealth; in exchange, she’ll receive money to help her struggling family. When the couple learns they’re expecting twins, with one stillborn, Cao Nhơn invites his aunties (who harbor a secret and sinister interest in this pregnancy) to save the remaining child through witchcraft.

Through non-linear chapters, the film’s twisty narrative hurtles between past and present: revealing abusive childhoods, reanimated undead, white collar corruption, and supernatural mythos. Director Trần Nhân Kiên conjures a maximalist, phantasmagoric parable unpacking the cost of toxic generational violence and the desperate pursuit of wealth.

With an unhinged central performance by Hồng Thanh, vibrant production design by Trần Minh Hậu and stylist Thái Hải, and precisely wild editing by Nguyễn Hoàng Hương Thi & Tăng Nhật, Antithesis of Gemini is a loud and bold discovery from the Mekong Delta, tuned for the midnight crowd clamoring for extreme, shocking, “WTF” cinema.

By Julian Doan