The teams won the highest scores at four elimination rounds of the Da Nang International Fireworks Festival 2019, beating rivals from Italy, Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Holland, China and hosts Vietnam.

The month-long festival, which started June 1, had firework competitions every Saturday night wherein contestants tried to portray the beauty, history and culture of rivers in their countries through pyrotechnic displays.

Pyrotex Fireworx, joining the festival only for the second time, impressed spectators on the fourth night of competition last Saturday, where it competed with China’s Hunan Jingtai Fireworks Ltd. The team won resounding applause from spectators with a performance that used 700 water firecrackers.

Pyrotex Fireworx is one of the leading fireworks display and retail companies in the U.K. and has 200 performances to its credit across the world. In 2017, it won third prize at the Da Nang festival.

JoHo Pyro Professional AB was participating the festival for the first time, but a spectacular performance on the night of June 15 against three-time champion, Italy’s Parente Fireworks Group, saw them enter the final.

A performance by the Finnish team JoHo Pyro Professional AB at Da Nang
International Fireworks Festival on June 15, 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Nguyen Dong.

With 'Heroes in the river' as their theme, the Finnish team retold the myth of Lemminkainen with a gorgeous fireworks display that brought the audience to their feet. In Finnish mythology, Lemminkainen tries his best to conquer the terrifying Tuoni River to win the heart of a beautiful young woman.

Da Nang held the first International Fireworks Competition in 2008. In 2017, its transformation from a two-day competition to a month-long festival helped the city maintain its status as a leading tourism hub in the Asia-Pacific region.

Last year the city received 7.6 million visitors including 2.87 million foreigners, a 23.3 percent increase from the previous year. Earlier this year, the New York Timesranked Da Nang among the 52 best places to go in 2019.