Dust of Life (1995) User Reviews

Story of viet-American children trying to escape a camp

[niceguy68 · 6/10 · 29 September 2006]

This movie is also called "Dust of life" in English and was made by Alex Bouchareb in 1994.

In 1975, 3 kids decide to escape a reeducation camp in the Vietnamese equatorial forest near Cambodia where the Amerasians are imprisoned, tortured both mentally and physically. Son, the hero is sent in that camp after her mother fails to find his father to send him away to America.

Search the web for the title to find more information. You can find the poster of the movie on cineposters dot com.

Kind of reminds me of Papillon or the Killing Fields though maybe a notch down in terms of realization... This movie is based on facts from the after war.

Profoundly moving

[lajetee_kawthoolei · 10/10 · 11 June 2010]

A gripping, profoundly moving story - - finally a "Vietnam War" movie from an Amerasian perspective! A gut-wrenching and non-sentimental tale of young Amerasian kids just after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Rounded up and subjected to re-education camps, several band together to survive and plot escape. Oscar-Nominated Best Foreign picture in 1995... also known as "Dust of Life". Based on a true story. Unfortunately producer/director Rachid Bouchareb, (known better for the more recent French films, such as Indigenes, 29 Palms, L'humanite, West Beirut, Flanders, and London River) has never widely released this film in the United States so few people have had the opportunity to experience it. Amazing soundtrack and unrelenting plot- line. Powerful!

the war after the war

[lee_eisenberg · 10/10 · 20 April 2020]

The Vietnam War was one of the major events of the twentieth century. The last image of it that people in the US saw was the helicopter fleeing the US embassy while people tried to board. But what happened in Vietnam afterwards was just as important. With the US gone, the North Vietnamese rounded up the children fathered by US troops and put them in reeducation camps. Rachid Bouchareb's Academy Award-nominated "Poussières de vie" ("Dust of Life" in English) looks at some children in one such camp. The protagonists suffer all sorts of degradation in the camp and can only hope to escape.

This, as well as the Khmer Rouge's killing fields, just go to show how much could've gotten avoided had the US not turned Indochina into a Cold War battlefield in the 1960s. I recommend the movie.