Embassy of Canada – screening of Kim Thúy’s Ru in Tallinn at 6PM on 2 October, 2024

To celebrate the work of the Canadian writer Kim Thúy, the Embassy of Canada in collaboration with the French Institute of Estonia will host a screening of the film Ru on 2 October at Sõprus cinema. Kim Thúy is a Canadian writer born in Saigon, South Vietnam in 1968, whose debut novel Ru won the Governor General's Award for French-Language fiction in 2010.

At the age of 10, Thúy left Vietnam with her parents and two brothers, joining more than a million Vietnamese boat people fleeing the country's communist regime after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Her family arrived at a refugee camp in Malaysia, run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, where they spent four months before a Canadian delegation selected her parents for refugee status on account of their French-language proficiency. In late 1979, Thúy and her family arrived in Granby, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and later settled in Montreal.

Ru is a 2023 Canadian drama film directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud. It is an adaptation of Kim Thúy's award-winning novel which centres on the coming-of-age of Tinh (Chloé Djandji), a young girl from Vietnam who is adapting to Quebec culture and society after her family move to Granby as refugees from the Vietnam War.

The film will be followed by a discussion with the translator of Ru Triinu Tamme and a representative of the Estonian Refugee Council. Ru was translated into Estonian in 2014 and the book was published as part of the Loomingu Raamatukogu series. The author also visited Estonia in 2019, marking 10 years since the translation of the novel and 5 years since the author's visit to Estonia.

The Francophonie Summit will also take place in Paris, France, from 4-5 October. Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, or La Francophonie, is an organization founded in 1970 and dedicated to promoting the French language, as well as political, educational, economic and cultural cooperation among its 88 member states, which includes Estonia as an observer state. 

The screening will take place on 2 October at 18:00 at Sõprus cinema in Tallinn, Vana-Posti 8. The film is in French with English subtitles. The event will be opened by the Ambassador of Canada to Estonia, Laird Hindle.

The event is free of charge.