Vietnam has prohibited the release of Barbie, the movie.

The “nine dash line” is a boundary that defines China’s territorial claim. The South China Sea is close by. The same land is being contested by Vietnam and other nations.

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According to reports, the film includes a map in which the nine-dash line is indicated to be a portion of China’s territory. This was reportedly enough for Vietnam to reject the movie, which will premiere on July 21.

The Vietnam Cinema Department representative was direct. “Due to the offending image of the nine-dash line, we do not grant a licence for the American movie Barbie to be released in Vietnam.”

Barbie is one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the summer. It is a live-action story about the famous Mattel dolls—Barbie and Ken—with an all-star cast including the likes of Gosling, Robbie, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Ncuti Gatwa, Michael Cera, Simu Liu, America Ferrera and Dua Lipa.

Expectations for the movie’s box office performance have been heightened by social media hype and memes, particularly given that it shares a release date with Oppenheimer, another highly anticipated film with a noticeably downbeat tone.

It is by no means the first movie to be banned in the area due to the use of the nine-dash line. Both Tom Holland’s Uncharted and Dreamworks’ Abominable were banned in Vietnam in 2022 and Malaysia in 2019 respectively due to the use of the nine-dash line in maps.

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One of the world’s most strategically and economically significant sections of water is the South China Sea, and its territory is hotly contested. Beijing, the dominant economic and military power in the region, claims practically all of it on the basis of historical use, and to support this expansive claim, it has constructed military facilities and entire islands in key locations.

Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Vietnam are just a few of the nations that disagree with China’s claim, which was also denied by an international tribunal in The Hague in 2016. Images that appear to validate China’s illegitimate claim have been made illegal in certain nations, including Vietnam, as a result of China’s continued rejection of the judgement and claim of the area.