Vietnam banned the screening of the Hollywood movie “Barbie”.

July 5, 2023 | 20:29:43

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The Vietnamese authorities have banned the screening of the awaited Hollywood film ‘Barbie’, which is also preparing to be shown in Nepal. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s Warner Bros. Studio film will be released worldwide on July 6. This film is considered as the most awaited film of summer in Hollywood.

Vietnam has objected to a map of the ‘Nine Dash Line’ included in a scene of the film. China is claiming the area in the South China Sea. But Vietnam called the Chinese claim a violation of sovereignty.

It remains to be seen how the Nepal Film Censor Board (Censor Board) will respond to this controversy of strategic diplomacy. Nepal has repeatedly committed to the ‘One China Policy’ and has been considering the non-aligned foreign policy as the main basis of its foreign policy.

V Kien Thanh, director general of the Vietnam Cinema Department under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, said on Monday that the National Film Evaluation Council decided to ban the film.

Many of China’s neighbors, including Vietnam, have been claiming that the territory has been destroyed. They have been strongly opposing the Chinese claim. In 2016, the United Nations Dispute Resolution Tribunal in The Hague unanimously decided against the validity of the ‘nine-dash line’. However, there is no clear mechanism to mediate the South China Sea dispute. China has been saying that it does not recognize the Hague’s decision.

“We will not license the American film Barbie for release in Vietnam because it contains an offensive scene of the nine-dash line,” the state-run Toi Tre newspaper quoted officials as saying. The depiction of the ‘Nine Dash Line’ has previously caused problems for many films and TV series in Vietnam. Dreamworks’ animated film ‘Abominable’ was banned in 2019 for the same reason, and Sony’s ‘Uncharted’ suffered a similar fate last year.