Match Made
2006 · 48m · Documentary
Each day, men from various parts of Asia make a stop in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) where they embark on their search for a perfect match. Using verité footage and interviews, Match Made offers a glimpse into the intricate network of the buying and selling of women as brides from villages around Saigon.
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Living as One Should
1987 · ★ 6.3
A Vietnamese documentary on human suffering and the meaning of kindness.
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The Birds Changed Names And The World Turned Into Ice
2022
Migrant families experience violence, but they also keep beautiful memories when they arrive in new lands. Fantastic and intimate stories, recalled from childhood, travel across time and space, magically intermingling with the help of the four elements and breaking the boundaries of cinema.
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Churning the Sea of Time: A Journey Up the Mekong to Angkor
2006
One of the mythic journeys of our time, through the exquisite, complicated, surprising terrain of Vietnam and Cambodia to the great ruins at Angkor - the magnificent Khmer temples being painstakingly restored deep in the Cambodian jungle. It is a high definition odyssey up a river far distanced in time from the corridor into the heart of darkness portrayed in Francis Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." In Angkor, the World Monuments Fund's John Stubbs and John Sanday describe their 15-year restoration of one of the jewels of a city called "the eighth wonder of the world." As we go inside the 12th Century temple complex of Preah Khan, along with the other major sites of Angkor Wat, Bayon and Banteay Srei, we learn that the story of their work in Angkor is not only a story of the rebirth of Angkor after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge Era, but it also is a story of the rebirth of Cambodia.
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Hearts and Minds
1974 · ★ 7.6
Many times during his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson said that ultimate victory in the Vietnam War depended upon the U.S. military winning the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Filmmaker Peter Davis uses Johnson's phrase in an ironic context in this anti-war documentary, filmed and released while the Vietnam War was still under way, juxtaposing interviews with military figures like U.S. Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland with shocking scenes of violence and brutality.
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2013
A Hmong guide's daily life in the mountains of Sapa, North Vietnam.
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2017
The Art of Nom explores an ancient and nearly extinct Vietnamese script called Chu Nom and the five scholarly artists known as Zenei, Gang of Five. The beauty, heritage and emotion of the Chu Nom characters inspire Zenei’s art. The film also examines Vietnam’s culture, history, customs, and the social impact of rapid modernization in a changing world. Art of Nom follows Zenei through their research and explorations that takes them far off the beaten path. They enter hidden library chambers of Buddhist pagodas to examine original Nom scriptures and woodblocks preserved by monks through the centuries. Led by renowned artist Le Quoc Viet, Zenei is a collective of avant-garde calligraphers forging a new path, merging contemporary visual expression with a nearly extinct script. Zenei elevates art and history to a new level of experience.
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Rio Corgo
2015 · ★ 6
Silva, an old drifter, arrives at a small and isolated Portuguese village where he meets the young Ana. They develop a relation in between friendship and initiation. Fascinated by that wondrous man, Ana progressively falls into his universe. A life populated by supernatural figures including her long lost friend Carolina. But strange fits weaken Silva, bringing him to the hospital, where a dozen women start inhabiting him. Will they save him?
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The Dumpling Vendor
2013
To provide for his young family, a food vendor searches for customers in the ancient city of Hue from sunset until the early morning. An insight into the the life of a banh bao vendor. Hoa, 42; a farmer by day who has been selling banh bao on Hue’s streets for 12 years. Hoa cycles from his country home to Hue every afternoon to sell a barrel load of the Vietnamese dumplings and provide for his young family.
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Little Dieter Needs to Fly
1997 · ★ 7.5
Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made, and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.
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The Coffee Trail with Simon Reeve
2014 · ★ 7
Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Vietnam to uncover the stories behind the nation's morning pick-me-up. While we drink millions of cups of the stuff each week, how many of us know where our coffee actually comes from?
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The Face of the Enemy
2009 · ★ 5
An anti-war film about the personal suffering behind the hard statistics, which show that more than four million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War, as opposed to 58,000 Americans. We hear South and North Vietnamese, including émigrés to the United States, describing how huge numbers of friends met their deaths, caught as they were between government forces, the Vietcong, and the Americans; how political boundaries divided not only the country, but also families; how mothers deserted their children because their fathers were American soldiers; and how the war cruelly lingers on long after hostilities ceased, in the lives of children born crippled by chemical weapons.
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A Hundred Years of Happiness
2020 · ★ 2.5
A Hundred Years of Happiness; an observational documentary, is a personal portraiture of a Vietnamese farming family and their daughter Tram. While her father instils in her the importance of familial obligation to care for one’s ageing parents, her mother desires a secure future devoid of economic hardship. Determined to fulfil both her parent’s wishes, Tram pursues a new life in South Korea as a migrant bride, but her fast-tracked journey leaves little time for reflection.
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