The Beautiful Country

One of the consequences of the U.S.-Viet Nam war was the children of G.I.s by their Viet Namese wives and lovers. For years, women who were involved with U.S. soldiers were social outcasts, treated as collaborators while their children, even when living with grandparents, endured taunts and abuse. This is the story of one such child, Binh, being forced from his village at seventeen years, going to Saigon to find his mother, then trying to escape to the U.S. with his much younger half-brother, Tam, in 1990. The film lingers on the rigors of the voyage: the sampan, the Malaysian detention camps, the illegal refugee ship, and the underground economy with near-slavery in New York City. It then opens up when Binh leaves New York for Houston to find his father.