Director: Charles-Olivier Michaud
Survival is only the first chapter; building a new life afterward is its own kind of endurance.
What is Ru about?
Ru follows Tinh, a young Vietnamese girl, and her family after they survive a perilous sea crossing and months in a refugee camp in Malaysia, finally being resettled in Montreal, Canada. The film moves between the disorientation of arrival — a new language, a new climate, a new set of neighbors — and quieter memories of the life left behind. Tinh's adjustment is neither smooth nor sudden; small daily frictions, from schoolyard misunderstandings to the strangeness of Quebec winters, accumulate into a portrait of what displacement actually feels like from a child's point of view. Director Charles-Olivier Michaud adapts Kim Thúy's acclaimed novel with a restrained, impressionistic style, favoring fragments and sensory detail over a conventional plot arc, letting the emotional weight of resettlement build gradually rather than through a single dramatic turning point.
Cast & crew
Chloé Djandji carries much of the film's emotional register as young Tinh, working opposite Chantal Thuy and Jean Bui as her parents navigating the same upheaval from an adult vantage point. Karine Vanasse appears in a supporting role, and the ensemble's understated performances match the film's quiet, memory-driven tone.
Context & significance
Ru premiered in 2023 and is based on Kim Thúy's award-winning autobiographical novel of the same name, one of the more widely translated works of contemporary Quebec literature. At 117 minutes, the film belongs to a broader wave of refugee and immigration dramas that focus on interior experience rather than plot mechanics, and it was Canada's official submission for international feature consideration that year.
Where & how to watch
Ru streams on K-Time with a free account login, and both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles are available for the film. Anyone can browse the page itself without signing in first, and the Farsi interface is built to make discovery and viewing straightforward for Persian-speaking members of the diaspora audience.