Daughter From Danang

The winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco's unusually rich film tells the story of one Vietnamese-born American woman who goes looking for her roots but gets a lot more than she bargained for. Mai Thi Hiep was one of thousands of South Vietnamese children airlifted out of South Vietnam in the spring of 1975 and adopted by U.S. families. "Operation Babylift" was essentially a last-ditch "humanitarian" effort by the U.S. government to win sympathy for an unpopular war, and was sold to frightened Vietnamese parents as the responsible thing to do. Hiep's mother, Mai Thi Kim, was understandab...