Filming a Decade of Climate Adaptation in Vietnam

For more than ten years, The CREATV Company has documented the evolution of Ho Chi

Minh City's landmark flood control project, creating a rare visual record of how Vietnam's largest city is adapting to the challenges of climate change, urbanisation and rising tides. Few infrastructure projects are documented from groundbreaking to completion. Fewer still are documented continuously over the course of more than a decade. 

For CREATV, Ho Chi Minh City's landmark Flood Control Project has been exactly that opportunity. 

When we first began documenting the project, the assignment was expected to last three years. Our role was to record the development of one of Vietnam's most ambitious urban infrastructure projects, capturing its progress through construction milestones, engineering achievements and public events. 

More than ten years later, our cameras are still following the story. 

As the project approaches its anticipated inauguration in 2026, we are once again in production, completing the final chapter of a journey that has spanned more than a decade. 

Flooded streets highlight the urban flooding challenges that inspired Ho Chi Minh City's flood-control program.

A City Shaped by Water 

Officially titled Flood Control for Ho Chi Minh City Due to Tides, Taking into Account Climate Change (Phase 1), the project was developed by investor Trung Nam BT 1547 Company Limited to help address some of the most complex water-management challenges facing Vietnam's largest city.  Stretching across approximately 570 square kilometres of Ho Chi Minh City, the system integrates flood-control structures, pumping stations, ship locks and monitoring technologies into a coordinated network designed to help manage the complex interaction between tides, rainfall and urban growth. 

Ho Chi Minh City owes much of its history and prosperity to water. Built on wetlands and connected by an extensive network of rivers, canals and tidal waterways, the city grew around the same natural systems that increasingly challenge it today. 

Rapid urbanisation, heavier rainfall, tidal flooding and the growing effects of climate change have placed increasing pressure on the city's drainage and water-management systems. The flood control project was designed to improve the city's ability to manage those pressures through a coordinated network of large flood-control structures, pumping systems, ship locks and monitoring technologies. 

Its purpose is not to eliminate flooding entirely, but to help the city better manage water levels and respond to increasingly complex environmental conditions. 

For filmmakers, however, the story extends beyond engineering itself. It is also a story about how a city adapts to changing realities while maintaining its relationship with the waterways that shaped its development. 

A Story That Outlasted the Schedule 

Most productions are planned around fixed timelines. Infrastructure projects rarely follow the same logic. 

The flood control project evolved alongside changing construction schedules, technical refinements, administrative processes and the wider disruptions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. What began as a relatively straightforward assignment gradually became a decade-long commitment. 

Close-up documentation of the engineering details that formed part of the project's visual record.

Rather than documenting a handful of milestones, CREATV crews returned repeatedly to waterways, fabrication yards, pumping stations and floodgate sites across Ho Chi Minh City. Over time, the production expanded from construction coverage into something far more valuable: a visual archive of one of Vietnam's most significant climate-adaptation projects. 

Building a Visual Archive Over Ten Years 

Early construction at the Cay Kho site during foundation and structural development.

Over more than a decade, CREATV crews have filmed thousands of hours of footage across project sites throughout Ho Chi Minh City. 

The archive includes aerial cinematography, engineering documentation, construction progress records, interviews, milestone events and time-lapse sequences captured across multiple phases of development. 

A floodgate section is transported by barge through Ho Chi Minh City's waterways ahead of installation.

Many of the most memorable images reveal transformation over time: waterways changing shape, massive floodgates being assembled and installed, construction sites evolving from foundations to fully operational infrastructure, and entire districts adapting around the works taking place beside them.  Just as importantly, the archive records the people behind the project.  Engineers, project managers, construction crews, vessel operators, local residents and communities living alongside the works all became part of the story. Their experiences provide a human dimension to infrastructure that can otherwise be difficult to appreciate purely through its scale. 

Returning to the same locations year after year allowed us to document not simply moments, but change itself. 

Management oversees installation of the gate valves of Cay Kho.

A construction worker involved in building one of Vietnam's major urban infrastructure projects.

Not Our First Long Journey 

The flood control project is part of a larger pattern that has shaped CREATV throughout our history. 

Around the same period that our work on the flood control project began, we were already documenting BP's Nam Con Son gas development, which evolved into a relationship that spanned more than ten years, creating an extensive visual record of one of Vietnam's most important energy investments. 

Over the past twenty-five years, we have repeatedly found ourselves involved in projects whose stories could only be told over long periods of time. 

We pioneered one of Vietnam's earliest large-scale infrastructure time-lapse projects during the construction of Ho Chi Minh City's Phu My Bridge. More recently, we have worked extensively with Trung Nam Group, documenting major wind and solar developments that contribute to Vietnam's renewable energy transition. 

Although the industries differ, the pattern is remarkably consistent. Meaningful infrastructure stories reveal themselves over time through repeated observation and long-term documentation. 

Why Long-Term Documentation Matters 

An aerial view reveals the scale of the flood-control infrastructure being developed along the city's waterways.

Infrastructure shapes the future of cities, industries and communities, yet the process of creating it is often forgotten once construction is complete. 

Long-term documentation preserves that process. 

For The CREATV Company, the Ho Chi Minh City Flood Control Project stands as one of the clearest examples of that philosophy. 

What began with a presentation outlining an ambitious vision for Ho Chi Minh City evolved into a decade-long documentary record of one of Vietnam's most significant climate-adaptation projects. 

As the city prepares for the next chapter in its relationship with water, the archive remains a reminder that infrastructure is not only about what is built, but how it is built, and the people who make it possible. 

Completed Ben Nghe floodgate and surrounding cityscape in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Further Reading: 

Seeing Vietnam Again, for the First Time, Again Why Filming in Vietnam Is the Next Great Production Frontier 

Orange: The Colour of Safety