[2] The agency had forwarded this information to Ann Neville, who subsequently ignored it and never told Heidi. Another point it has revealed to me that despite of the mess the Americans did in the Vietnam War the government still did one thing which was decent enough to save the lives of hundreds of thousands that if remain would be killed in a Ethnic Genocide which is mostly ignored by the world.The Americans involvement in the bloody war in my view at first was a noble intention however as the war reached the Johnson administration it became a disaster since then. The Danaher family name was found in the USA, the UK, Canada, and Scotland between 1851 and 1920. Her half-brother then tells Heidi that if she cannot take Mai Thi with her, they will expect Heidi to send them money regularly. I did not know what it was, but my instinct told me it was a drama movie/documentary film. Husband 17. One of those documentaries that truly captures the mystery of real human nature, rather than just explaining a situation. To all outward appearances, Heidi is the proverbial "all-American girl", hailing from small town Pulaski, Tenn. How can she live with herself? The American woman, Heidi, was looking for a no-strings attached relationship that would provide her with some sort of emotional security blanket that apparently was absent in the cold upbringing of her adoptive mother. Her awareness and familiarization of the social culture could have helped her interact with her family in a more positive way, and may have avoided the unnecessary feeling of shock, anger and resentment that caused her so much anguish, it broke my heart. Daughter from Danang is a poignant portrayal of a woman who searches for her estranged birth mother in Vietnam. And Heidi could not bring herself to promise to do even this. Great-uncle 4. The documentary entitled, Daughter From Danang, is centered around Heidi, a Vietnamese/American mixed person, who was one of the many mixed children who were made from a result of American soldiers intermingling with Vietnamese prostitutes during the Vietnam war. | The main emphasis is the reuniting of mother and daughter despite of all those years of separation. I understand the reason behind the operation, but I have mixed feelings. Instead, the movie ended in a sad tone with a subtle hint of possibly another tragedy in the making. | The approximately 130 that perished in the plane crash might still be alive. First cousin once removed 29. Uncle (Husband of Aunt) 12. Daughter from Danang tells the dramatic story of one of these children, Heidi Bub (a.k.a. This is then a call for PART TWO of the drama ...... ah! She was working at an American military base where she met Heidi's father, an American serviceman. Maybe it's because I come from a culturally diverse background and was raised to understand and accept cultural differences, but I thought it was common knowledge that in many cultures throughout the world a way to show love for your family is to help care for them financially if you are able. Daughter From Danang was, in my opinion, an exceptional, well-done documentary in it's honesty. The daughter who reunites with her Vietnamese mother after two decades, is happy to meet her mother again, but is disappointed at her mother's financial expectations from her.. The film followed the unfolding events with honesty. Heidi is shocked and walks out of their home in tears. Ohio had the highest population of Danag families in 1920. I really liked this movie. At the age of six, Heidi was sent to the United States and placed in an orphanage run by the Holt Adoption Agency. However, getting the back-story early on is helpful and the preliminary interviews with Heidi are a striking character study. Cousin’s husband 22. Daughter 27. Her half siblings' demands for financial help were a bit annoying, but with the level of education and "exposure" they'd had, one cannot really blame them. Metacritic Reviews. The fact that she took offense to her sister, who has a hole in the floor for a toilet, asking her for money was unbelievable. It was a selfish and cruel decision. Cross-cultural understanding...and mis-understanding, Good example of the limited cultural exposure of rural America, A challenging film for a challenging time in our history, A Mother-Daughter Reunion after two decades.. A story of happiness and Sorrow. A heartbreaking documentary that upsets your expectations of happily-ever-afters, Daughter from Danang is a riveting emotional drama of longing, identity, and the personal legacy of war. This admittedly picturesque façade is no more real than that of the silly Southerners with their bad perms. Among numerous other parenting failures, Heidi's new adoptive mother never discussed her daughter's racial background with her, and warned her not to discuss it with anyone else either. Saw it at Sundance 2002, where it won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, and deservedly so. Although the last part which shows of the differences in tradition comes out. And although there are people who would be critical to Heidi for not supporting her mother financially. This proves to make her first visit with her mother and family difficult as she wrestles with the culture shock from Tennessee to Vietnam. She was also instructed to tell people she had been born in the US and not Vietnam, and that she was fully white and not biracial. [6], 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. A provocative look at the unexpected consequences of both war and family, Daughter From Danang is a documentary that follows Heidi Bub’s journey to Vietnam, and what she found there. This was demonstrated by their aggressiveness in asking for financial help, of which Heidi took it as rude and offensive. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, fare little better. Answered: I'm planning a trip to Danang for my kid's 9th birthday and debating between Banyan Tree and Intercontinental. Daughter from Danang (36) ... All in all, the earlier proclaimations of "love","daughter" and "family" seem very superficial coming from Heidi. 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. This does not become truly apparent until we reach the end. She was adopted by an American family in Tennessee and became 101% Americanized, and given the name Heidi Bub. But who knows, maybe she saw her long lost relations as being nothing more than greedy, non-productive, materialistic leeches whose interpretation of family ties extended only as far as latching on to her for financial support. image copyright Ranald Mackechnie. I work in the adoption field and I found this documentary to be a very interesting piece about an adoptee who is reunited with her birth family. Nevertheless, I just wanted to cringe when Heidi pulled that phony Scarlet O'Hara act with the crying, whining and sniveling as soon as things got a little out of her comfort zone. The film follows a half-Vietnamese, half-American woman named Heidi as she returns to visit Vietnam and the family … Daughter From Danang was awarded the Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Heidi maintains that she barely knows her Vietnamese family, and feels she is being exploited. It did not try to sugar-coat anything. There is no blood, no violence, no profanity, but this rating is due to the high emotional content. If our grandmothers, our mothers, our brothers, sisters, cousins, FAMILY are struggling, we help. It is great that she has the love and support of her husband and two daughters, but it is very sad that her adoptive mother failed her miserably. She should have done some research on the Vietnamese culture as should have her family with western culture. An International adoptee who didn't get it. She decides to return to America ahead of schedule, feeling more emotional conflict than ever before. Sister 13. I feel the utmost sympathy for Heidi's mother and the rest of her family, but I couldn't muster up any sympathy for Heidi... Actually, that's not true. The way Heidi treated her Vietnamese family was a travesty. Running head: DAUGHTER FROM DANANG 1 Daughter from Danang Name Institution Daughter from Danang The documentary film, “Daughter from Danang," is heartbreaking considering the post-Vietnam war where there was a massive death. I myself is a mixture of Chinese and of Southeast Asian background (not Vietnamese). They were all victims! Her mother, who is responsible for Heidi's lovely, easy life in America, was totally scorned by this heartless daughter. I say that is nothing wrong she did she went to see who her mother is and to be reunited with her. FAQ Daughter from Danang: Love vs. How heart-wrenching it was to watch and I just thank God most of us will never be in that situation. With grace and courage and humor, she lets the hard knocks of her life roll off her back like water. As she's leaving on the plan for Danang, we see her only just learning how speak the language in a cursory way. I just saw this movie, it was so difficult and emotional. Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize Winners, Winners of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentaries. Here were people on the fringes of survival and the overfed American military wife is complaining about the discomfort her mother, whom she hasn't seen in 22 years, is causing her by stopping to chat with people while shopping in a smelly food and fish market. Great-grandfather 2. (Use popular names from your target country. I had never heard of Operation Babylift prior to watching Daughter from Danang. Any documentary that keeps me glued to the set (I saw "Daughter from Danang" on PBS television) and can provoke compassion, delight, consternation, embarrassment, anger, admiration, and deep chagrin, is, to my mind, a great documentary. Daughter From Danang cuts between mother and daughter as the two recall the pain of their separation, and retraces Hiep's journey from Vietnam to Pulaski, Tennessee, where she is … Cousin 19. This documentary was in my view the best I have seen in a long time. Grandso… You have to search through your vocabulary for superlatives here, featured throughout are extraordinary glimpses of faces framed in their own natural environment, the underlying original music is superb and perfectly balanced, there is a wonderful golden-orange sunrise on a quiet riverbank following her first night in Vietnam where the camera finds a dragonfly resting atop the highest leaf, when her Vietnamese childhood memories return they appear to be almost sketched onto a canvas in an impressionistic blur, all beautifully layered together. I think, if she's able to do this, she would feel whole, strong and liberated. The filmmakers fail in trying to achieve some deeper cultural understanding about what it means to be American, Asian, and a blend of both, focusing instead on the devastating emotions experienced by Heidi and her natural mother in order to emotionally manipulate the audience. I was so dismayed and touched by the footage of these children being separated from their Vietnamese mothers. "Daughter from Danang" was recently shown as part of the Asian American Film Festival in San Francisco, and while it may have been acclaimed at Sundance, here in San Francisco, which obviously has a much larger Asian population, the film induced a much different response among viewers. ", https://www.metacritic.com/movie/daughter-from-danang, http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.china/2009-09/msg00036.html, Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II, Marcus Garvey: Look For Me in the Whirlwind, Roots of Resistance: The Story of the Underground Railroad, Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of the American Century, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daughter_from_Danang&oldid=996800484, Documentary films about immigration to the United States, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, 2002 Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize Best Documentary, San Francisco International Film Festival, Golden Gate Award Grand Prize, Best Bay Area Documentary, Ojai Film Festival, Best Documentary Feature, Durango (Colorado) Film Festival, Filmmakers Award, 2002 Texas Film Festival, Best Documentary and Audience Choice Award, New Jersey International Film Festival, Best Documentary, Nashville International Film Festival, Honorable Mention - Best Documentary, Cleveland International Film Festival, Runner Up - Best Film, This page was last edited on 28 December 2020, at 17:55. Her family was not being greedy or selfish, you could clearly see how bad they were struggling to keep a roof over their heads.