Daughter from Danang (2002)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Directors:

Gail Dolgin
Vicente Franco

Genre:

Documentary | War

Plot:

Separated at the end of the Vietnam war, an "Americanized" woman and her Vietnamese mother are reunited after 22 years.

Plot Keywords:

Adoption | Vietnam War | Search | Provocative | Journey

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 2 wins

Cast

Mai Thi Kim	...	Herself
Heidi Neville-Bub	...	Herself
Gerald Ford	...	Himself (archive footage)
Tom Miller	...	Himself
Tran Tuong Nhu	...	Herself
Mabel Neville	...	Herself
Don Neville	...	Himself
Royce Hughes	...	Herself
Wanda Hamlett	...	Herself
Brenda Lewis	...	Herself
John Bub	...	Himself
Do Huu Vinh	...	Himself
Do Trong Tinh	...	Himself
Do Thi Thu Hien	...	Herself
Do Thi Hong Lien	...	Herself
Dinh Dung	...	Himself
Kaitlin Neville	...	Herself
Jessica Neville	...	Herself

Directed by
Gail Dolgin
Vicente Franco

Produced by
Gail Dolgin	....	producer
Sunshine Ludder	....	associate producer

Original Music by
B. Quincy Griffin
Hector Perez
Van-Anh T. Vo

Cinematography by
Vicente Franco

Film Editing by
Kim Roberts

Sound Department
Dan Olmsted	....	sound re-recording mixer

Visual Effects by
James Kenney	....	titles & graphics

Other crew
Woo Cho	....	producer's representative
Tran Tuong Nhu	....	consultant
Kenn Rabin	....	archival film researcher

Distributors

• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) (2002) (USA) (TV) (original airing)
• Balcony Releasing (2002) (USA) (theatrical)
• PBS Home Video (2003) (USA) (VHS)
• PBS Home Video (2004) (USA) (DVD)
• Warner Home Video (2003) (USA) (video)

Runtime:

USA:83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Vietnamese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Filming Locations:

Da Nang, Vietnam

Quotes:

Royce Hughes: We made a Southerner out of her really quick as far as that goes.

a sad example of a loss of roots

I really don't know how 'offended' I should be by Heidi in this documentary. When I 1st heard about it, all I really got was how this 'Nam baby was raised in the states and turned her back on her birth mother. With that in mind, I was really ready to be annoyed by her.

Instead I got annoyed with the environment she grew up in. She really had no cultural diversity. There was a large black community and a large white community but nothing else… unless you want to include the Klan. The people she grew up around where something out of King of The Hill, basically if they never even noticed that she was different, they just figured she always just had a tan. I guess unless you have an actual accent or a non-American sounding name, they just aren't going to notice.

So basically she grows up in this overall sheltered bubble, never being exposed to her actual culture. But she finds the need to go & finally meet her birth mother, sort of as a need for closure. What she doesn't really realize is that the rest of the world doesn't really function like Tennessee.

What we end up following is a woman going back to her roots but facing culture shock, she doesn't understand or really comprehend the hows & why's of the way people interact in Vietnam. This really disturbed me since the Heidi came to the states when she was about 6 or 7, but every bit of her Vietnamese side has been burnt out of her. In turn, her birth family is confused because she's one of them but doesn't understand why she doesn't want to accept their family ways.

The hardest part for me was her misunderstanding of their request for them to take care of her birth mother; she refused to help financially either by mailing money or just by taking her back to the states and taking care of her in Tennessee. I do understand that to her, this woman is pretty much just a stranger, but than again, this woman gave up her daughter for her own daughters' safety. Probably the hardest thing a parent could ever have to choose to do.

The gratitude her mother gets from her daughter is to be completely cut off. Heidi, even though she's exposed to the hardships that her maternal mother faced/faces, she still doesn't get it. She doesn't understand that in an Asian culture it's expected that the children take care of the parents when the parents are old. Basically, a very respectful thank you for all the years they spent raising and sacrificing for their children. Unlike America that it's more dependent on how well the parents saved up & how well their retirement plan is that a person bases on whether the parents should live in a retirement community or a house that they paid off. Options that her mother, realistically, does not have.

At the end of this all, I can only hope that Heidi sees this documentary and sees the reflection of herself, in hopes that she'll find the desire to learn more about her roots & take on her rightful responsibilities and roll for her mother.