Once upon a Time is an archival film about childhood memory, dreams, and longings, all transformed through the magic of storytelling and experimental images. Juxtaposing the changing landscapes of Sài Gòn, Vietnam through history and children storytelling, the film becomes a space of happening where (queer) storytelling re-enact and provide justice to the past as an effort to reinvent the collective memory and provide the comfort of home in the turbulence of history and reality.

In this quiet tale, a spell is cast in a quiet bedroom, and the turbulent history of Sài Gòn, Vietnam quickly weaves together to form a journey that trumps space and time, expressing itself through the digital mesh of Indochina travelogue, wartime footage, and modern Youtube travel video. As space reverts in time through the affective digital effects, the footage is juxtaposed with songs and images from a TV show called Ngày xua ngày xua (Once upon a Time), a popular theatre show that enacts story tales for children in the 2000s; figures of animated performers thus cast on top of the mutilated landscapes of history. Suddenly, a Buddha-figure shows up, consoling the broken-hearted, the war landscape footage quickens by and the room enclosed back to its original state.