In August 2021, Tôn Thất An presented a first draft of Playing Outside the Circle, a project initiated by Anvi Hoang, for her VASCAM artists talk serie in the US, and originally intended to be a video talk. Tôn Thất An chose instead to do a documentary in the form of a visual diary shot in black-and-white, which then quickly became a feature-length documentary.
The film focused on the composer’s rebirth after he left his native Paris and started a new life in Taipei, Taiwan, his work eventually blossoming in Japan, Vietnam and Taiwan, between music, contemporary dance, art projects and film.
The documentary, co-directed with Wang Zhi Xiang, includes visual stream of consciousness sequences shot in Taipei, Saigon, Huế and Hong Kong, interviews with collaborators and close friends: choreographers Jo Kanamori and Nguyễn Tấn Lộc, directors Trần Thanh Huy, Edmund Yeo or Ash Mayfair, dancer Sawako Iseki, artists James Teng, producer Trần Thị Bích Ngọc, as well as musicians and singers whom he feels are his re-composed family, namely Emily Chang, Allen Wu, Sam Liao or Bévinda among others. Excerpts from films and dance performances are in colour.
In the months following the launching of that first version, Tôn Thất An felt that if the sections covering his work were fairly well documented, he needed to go more in depth about his personal life and kept on shooting more footage, taking the opportunity of his recent stay in Paris to film more and gather rare documents.
The new version shall be completed at the end of the summer.

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