The upcoming Barbie movie will not be released in Vietnam.

According to the country’s state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper, the government has banned the film over a scene which features a map showing China’s controversial ‘nine-dash line’ – a unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea.

“We do not grant licence for the American movie Barbie to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,” the paper reported, citing Vi Kien Thanh, the head of the department of cinema.

Barbie is the latest movie to be banned in the Southeast Asian country for depicting China’s controversial nine-dash line, which is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its territorial claims over the South China Sea.

In 2019, the Vietnamese government pulled DreamWorks’ animated film Abominable and banned Sony’s action movie Uncharted last year for the same reason. Netflix also removed the Australian spy drama Pine Gap in 2021.

Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was originally slated to open in Vietnam on 21 July, when it will be released in most other countries.

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