Issue 017 · Spotlight

Between Assignments

Dennis and Patrick Weinert
Hà Giang, Vietnam · September 2026

A boy in dark clothes leads a cow away from the livestock market on a slack rope, the crowd behind him paying no attention — Dennis and Patrick Weinert

Two German documentary filmmakers whose broadcaster sells them as young adventurers. The four years of photographs they made in Vietnam's far north are the opposite of an adventure.

Words by Jack Ross

Dennis and Patrick Weinert have spent a decade sharing a single credit. The brothers, from Rheda-Wiedenbrück in western Germany, write, direct, shoot and cut their documentaries together — for NDR, ARD, ZDF, 3sat, ARTE, Deutsche Welle and SRF. They won a Helmut Schmidt Journalist Award for a reportage on child labour in Pakistan and a Peter Scholl-Latour Award for covering an Ebola outbreak in eastern D.R. Congo. They have published two photography books themselves, Resilienz and A World in Distress, and in 2019 they sat a directing masterclass with Trần Anh Hùng.

A woman in a dark headwrap carrying a woven basket looks back over her shoulder in the crowd at the Mèo Vạc cattle market, tethered piglets lying on the ground behind her — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A woman in a dark headwrap carrying a woven basket looks back over her shoulder in the crowd at the Mèo Vạc cattle market, tethered piglets lying on the ground behind her
Buyers and sellers lean over piles of pomelo, bananas and green plums at the morning market, a man in a beret in the foreground — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
Buyers and sellers lean over piles of pomelo, bananas and green plums at the morning market, a man in a beret in the foreground

Hmong Life is none of that. They lived in Ho Chi Minh City from 2018 to 2021, and it was there, they say, that they "started experiment with analog photography and developed a deep appreciation for the country." What came of it is four years of frames from the northern highlands, made on three different cameras and never assembled for anyone. Some is 35mm. Two of the strongest pictures are 6x7 on 120 roll film, the film edge still showing at the border. The rest is digital. Nothing in the series announces which is which, and nothing in it was cut to a running time.

Women in bright striped skirts hold the tethers of a cluster of black piglets on the ground; one takes a phone call, a large woven back-basket in the foreground — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
Women in bright striped skirts hold the tethers of a cluster of black piglets on the ground; one takes a phone call, a large woven back-basket in the foreground
Men at the market appraise two roosters held upside down by the feet, a boy in a striped shirt watching from the side — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
Men at the market appraise two roosters held upside down by the feet, a boy in a striped shirt watching from the side
A line of buyers stands behind a black cow at the livestock market, hills and tin roofs behind them — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A line of buyers stands behind a black cow at the livestock market, hills and tin roofs behind them

If Streets & Stories is new to you: one photographer an issue. This one runs two, because the work does not come apart into two photographers. Thanks for reading.

Dennis and Patrick Weinert in Hà Giang

It matters what this work is not, because the packaging around the brothers' broadcast career keeps reaching for something else. Their Mekong film went out on NDR inside a strand called Young Adventurers. The listing copy promises untouched jungle and "mysterious mountain peoples." The YouTube description offers "traditional, reclusive mountain tribes." In the narration, the Mekong Delta becomes "the original Vietnam, just as we imagined it."

A young man in a white helmet rides away from the market with a full-grown pig lashed across the back of his motorbike — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A young man in a white helmet rides away from the market with a full-grown pig lashed across the back of his motorbike

Hà Giang does not hold up its end of that. The market these photographs keep returning to hangs its own sign over the crowd — Chợ bò huyện Mèo Vạc, and underneath, in English, Meo Vac Market Cows. It is a livestock market. What happens there is commerce: prices, tethers, buyers taking their time. Nobody is waiting to be discovered.

A young woman in a red embroidered jacket stands with her hands on her hips beside a wheelbarrow and stacks of concrete blocks, a house going up behind her — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A young woman in a red embroidered jacket stands with her hands on her hips beside a wheelbarrow and stacks of concrete blocks, a house going up behind her

To their credit, the brothers got there first. NDR's own synopsis of that first episode records the moment their driver in Phnom Penh describes losing his family under the Khmer Rouge, and then puts the question on their behalf:

Is this journey only about their own adventure, or about actually understanding these people and their stories?

It was not rhetorical. In 2020 they made Hinter unserem Horizont — Beyond Our Horizon — a 36-minute essay film for ZDF and 3sat, prompted by a dangerous incident on assignment, in which they turned the camera on each other and went back through their own archive to work out what they were doing and why. It was nominated for a Grimme. In their own synopsis it ends "deep in the mountains of northern Vietnam": the same mountains, in the same years, as these photographs.

A woman in a red jacket turns mortar with a hoe while a girl in a pleated skirt, her arm in a sling, watches from beside a timber post — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A woman in a red jacket turns mortar with a hoe while a girl in a pleated skirt, her arm in a sling, watches from beside a timber post
A woman carries a whole timber beam on her shoulder along a concrete path, a woven basket on her back and a small child walking ahead with a bundle of sticks — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A woman carries a whole timber beam on her shoulder along a concrete path, a woven basket on her back and a small child walking ahead with a bundle of sticks
Two women work a steep hillside plot with short-handled hoes while a child stands watching from higher up the slope — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
Two women work a steep hillside plot with short-handled hoes while a child stands watching from higher up the slope

So the two bodies of work are the same trip, made twice. One had a broadcaster, a strand title and a delivery date. The other had four years, no client and no deadline, and it is the one where the mystery drains out — where the highlands turn out to run on hoes and mortar and sewing machines and second-hand Hondas, like anywhere else that works for a living.

A woman in red squats to work a field of turned earth below a dry-stone wall while another walks the path above — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A woman in red squats to work a field of turned earth below a dry-stone wall while another walks the path above
A village of tiled roofs and stone walls seen from the slope above, a single figure working the turned earth in the middle distance — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A village of tiled roofs and stone walls seen from the slope above, a single figure working the turned earth in the middle distance

That is what the patience buys, and it is the whole argument for looking at these pictures rather than reading about them. Scroll them. Nobody in them is hidden, reclusive or untouched. They are at work, at market and at home, photographed by two people who stayed long enough to become unremarkable.

A boy crouches in the scrub on a hillside cutting fodder with a sickle, a tall woven basket beside him and the valley hazy below — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A boy crouches in the scrub on a hillside cutting fodder with a sickle, a tall woven basket beside him and the valley hazy below
A young woman holds a baby in a knitted bonnet at the edge of a vegetable plot, terraced green mountains rising into mist behind her — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A young woman holds a baby in a knitted bonnet at the edge of a vegetable plot, terraced green mountains rising into mist behind her
A man in an indigo jacket crosses a concrete yard playing the khèn, water basins and a corrugated roof behind him — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A man in an indigo jacket crosses a concrete yard playing the khèn, water basins and a corrugated roof behind him
A man in an indigo jacket and flat cap stands holding his khèn across his body, looking into the camera — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A man in an indigo jacket and flat cap stands holding his khèn across his body, looking into the camera
A man in a flat cap sits at a low table set with bowls in a dark room, a young woman standing at his shoulder and a small child watching from the doorway — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A man in a flat cap sits at a low table set with bowls in a dark room, a young woman standing at his shoulder and a small child watching from the doorway
Six boys sit on the ground in the corner of a courtyard playing cards, seen from above — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
Six boys sit on the ground in the corner of a courtyard playing cards, seen from above
A woman works an industrial sewing machine against a breeze-block wall hung with mannequin torsos, bright leg-wraps and a child's pink coat, a boy in red sitting beside her — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A woman works an industrial sewing machine against a breeze-block wall hung with mannequin torsos, bright leg-wraps and a child's pink coat, a boy in red sitting beside her
An older woman in a headwrap and patterned jacket turns on a road to smile at the camera, tall grass behind her — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
An older woman in a headwrap and patterned jacket turns on a road to smile at the camera, tall grass behind her
A woman in a checked headwrap stands on a concrete veranda with four children gathered around her, all looking at the camera — Dennis and Patrick Weinert
A woman in a checked headwrap stands on a concrete veranda with four children gathered around her, all looking at the camera

Links worth your time

The Mekong film — NDR / ARD, 2025. In German, 44 min. It opens in Ho Chi Minh City and reaches the Delta at 6:16.
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