The project started out as a two hander between Kit and the character who ended up as Lewis, an African American, in the finished film, but started out as Hank, a Caucasian American. "Along the way, through the various notes that came from the execs and financiers, it was felt that the Hank character's voice - the dominant white American, in terms of the subtext of the war - had been heard before," Khaou says.
There are slight similarities between director Hong Khaou's experience and Kit's - like Kit's family, Khaou's parents fled South-East Asia when he was young - in their case from Cambodia - and he too grew up in Britain, but he wanted to distance himself a little from the film. "I didn't want to make it so much about me, although I guess it is inevitable it always comes out," he says. "I wanted to hide behind this Vietnamese character, so to speak, and talk about these feeling and issues I've always had about having to flee a war-torn country... and the struggle for a sense of cultural identity," Khaou says.
Actor Henry Golding portrays Kit, a Vietnamese born British citizen who returns to Vietnam. Golding is half Malaysian and half British, and was actually born in Malaysia, to a Malaysian mother and a British father, later becoming a British citizen when his family moved back to his father's home country, where he was raised.
The film began to take shape when Lilting (2014) played in Sundance, and the prestigious Sundance Screenwriter's Lab suggested Hong Khaou pitch them an idea for his next project.