Daughter from Danang

Daughter from Đà Nẵng
DVD cover
Directed by	Gail Dolgin Vicente Franco
Produced by	Gail Dolgin
Cinematography	Vincente Franco
Editing by	Kim Roberts
Distributed by	PBS Home Video (US DVD)
Release date(s)	11 January 2002 (premiere at Sundance) 1 November 2002 (NYC)
Running time	83 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English Vietnamese

Daughter from Đà Nẵng is a 2002 documentary film about an Amerasian, Heidi Bub (a.k.a. Mai Thi Hiep), born on December 10, 1968, in Danang in southern Vietnam, one of the children brought to the United States from Vietnam in 1975 during "Operation Babylift" at the end of the Vietnam War.

Heidi's father was an American serviceman, and her mother, Mai Thi Kim, already had three children but was working at an American military base where she met him, after her husband, Do Huu Vinh, had left her to fight with the Viet Cong. When the North Vietnamese army came closer to Danang, Heidi's mother feared for her safety due to rumors of threats against mixed-race children. At the age of six, Heidi was sent to United States and placed at an orphanage run by the Holt Adoption Agency.

Heidi was ultimately adopted by Ann Neville, a single American woman; she spent a year in Columbia, South Carolina before finally settling in Pulaski, Tennessee, where Heidi spent her life.^[1]

At the start of the documentary, Heidi has been estranged from her mother for several years, after Ann punished her for being ten minutes late for curfew one night by kicking her out of the house and disowning her. Although Heidi has since married and had children of her own, the estrangement between her and her mother has had a lasting emotional effect, and Heidi hopes that finding her biological mother will help her to achieve some kind of closure. Heidi contacts the Holt Adoption agency, and learns that her biological mother, Mai Thi Kim, sent them a letter in 1991 asking about Heidi's well-being.^[1] Heidi decides to return to Vietnam, assisted by journalist Tran Tuong Nhu.

In Vietnam, both Heidi and her family experience culture shock, as Heidi has no knowledge of Vietnamese customs and her family—who lives in abject poverty—has no knowledge of American culture. Mai Thi expects to spend every moment of the day with Heidi—and even sleep with her at night—which Heidi perceives as "suffocating" and an invasion of her personal space. She ultimately breaks down when her family informs her that they expect her to provide them with financial support, leading one of her relatives to disparage her for crying. Although it is explained to Heidi that most Vietnamese nationals who move to America provide money for family back home, Heidi feels that her own family is exploiting and using her. She finally decides to return to America ahead of schedule, feeling that rather than reconnecting with a family she never knew, she instead feels even more emotional conflict and emptiness than before she left.

At the end of the film, Heidi explains that she has begun receiving letters from her family in Vietnam since her visit, but that all of them turn into requests for money, and she doesn't feel ready to respond to them.^[1][2]

The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} People and Events: Biography of Heidi Bub - WGBH-TV, Boston, PBS American Experience documentary series.
2. ^ Rosenberg, Elinor B., The Adoption Life Cycle : the children and their families through the years, New York : Free Press ; Toronto : Maxwell Macmillan Canada ; New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, 1992. ISBN 0029270553. University of Michigan Professor, Rosenberg, who is a psychiatric social worker, was interviewed by USA Today newspaper on March 13, 2003 about this film and said: "The outcomes of reunions with birth parents vary widely. Bub's quest might have been doomed from the start. Adults who dislike their adoptive parents tend to fare poorly with reunions. They often seek substitute parents. They want to be parented again, this time by their fantasy birth parent. But in most cases, birth parents have gone on with their own lives and aren't interested in trying to raise a child again. It's often difficult to reunite across vastly different cultures."[1]
3. ^ "NY Times: Daughter from Đà Nẵng". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/261168/Daughter-From-Danang/details. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 

External links

• Official site
• Transcript of the film - PBS
• Daughter from Đà Nẵng from PBS's American Experience
• Daughter from Đà Nẵng at the Internet Movie Database
• Daughter from Đà Nẵng at AllRovi

Preceded by Southern Comfort

Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary 2002

Succeeded by The Corporation