| Daughter from Đà Nẵng | |
|---|---|
DVD cover |
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| 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]
| Preceded by Southern Comfort |
Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary 2002 |
Succeeded by The Corporation |