In 2025, Summer School, 2001, the debut feature of writer-director Dužan Duong and dubbed the “first Czech-Vietnamese feature film,” made a splash at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and beyond. Now, it is coming to America, courtesy of Reel Citrus, an L.A.-based distributor of Asian and diaspora films.
The company will open Summer School, 2001 in a limited U.S. theatrical release on Dec. 11 at Cinemark cinemas, hitting screens before Dune 3 and Avengers: Doomsday opens a week later. The film will then stream on Amazon from Dec. 18 before rolling out globally.
“At a time when immigration and belonging are front-page news in both the U.S. and Europe, the release brings two diasporas into the same theater,” said Reel Citrus.
Summer School, 2001 follows 17-year-old Kien, who returns to his family’s market stall in Cheb, a small town on the Czech border, after spending 10 years in Vietnam. It becomes a chaotic summer, during which the family must try to become whole again.
After its Karlovy Vary world premiere, the movie drew more than 20,000 moviegoers during its run in Czech cinemas. At the Czech Lion Awards, the Czech national film honors, Summer School, 2001 won the best screenplay award for Duong, Jan Smutný and Lukáš Kokeš, along with the best supporting actor honor for Dũng Nguyễn, the first Vietnamese actor to win a Czech Lion. The Czech Film Critics’ Awards named it the best screenplay and the Discovery of the Year.
‘Summer School, 2001’
Courtesy of KVIFF
At Viet Film Fest, the largest U.S. festival for the Vietnamese diaspora, the film won the Bronze Drum (Trống Đồng) Award for the best feature film, the best actor honor for Tô Tiến Tài and the Audience Choice Award for best feature.
Reel Citrus says it chose the theaters to target the communities that the film, which is in Vietnamese and Czech with English subtitles, speaks to. Most of the cinemas are in areas with large Vietnamese American populations, including Southern California, where it plays in Huntington Beach next to Little Saigon, the Bay Area, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Las Vegas and the Washington, D.C. area. The rest of the theaters are in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Central Texas, “home to strong Czech, Polish and other Central and Eastern European communities,” the company explains.
Vietnamese American families and Czech and Polish moviegoers came out in droves for a screening of Summer School, 2001 at the Avalon Theatre in Washington, D.C. last March. Co-presented with the Embassy of the Czech Republic, it served as an early test for Reel Citrus, which says it releases films “in person, one community at a time.”
Reel Citrus acquired North American rights across all media, along with worldwide streaming rights, to Summer School, 2001 from AZN kru.
“Summer School, 2001 was an eye-opening film for us,” said Brittany Tran, founder & managing director of Reel Citrus. “Many of us grew up knowing the Vietnamese American story, but we knew far less about the Vietnamese families who built their lives in the Czech Republic and across Europe. Our diaspora is global, and when Vietnamese communities in the U.S. see the communities in Europe, we realize how much we share.”
Dužan Duong, courtesy of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
She added: “We know we’re opening the week before Dune and Avengers, so we’re competing with the gods. But audiences who rarely see their own stories on the big screen are exactly who this release is for.”
And Duong, who talked to THR about his creative vision for Summer School, 2001 and his other creative work, shared: “Vietnamese families have been part of Czech life for decades, but our stories rarely reach the screen. I made this film for my community in Cheb and for every family that has had to find its way back to each other. Seeing it open in American theaters, in front of Vietnamese and Czech audiences together, means more than I can say.”
Check out a trailer for Summer School, 2001 here.