Daughter from Danang - An American Experience
Documentary Tells Story of Operation Babylift Child
Gail Dolgin and Vicente FrancoIn's documentary begins in 1975, as a 7-year-old tiny girl was taken from her family and hurriedly put on a large transport to the United States. Her Vietnamese family had been told that all mixed children (half American) would be doused with gasoline and set afire by the VietCong. To save her, her mother put her on one of the Operation Babylift carriers and said good-bye. The little girl, renamed Heidi Bub in America, was old enough to recall her brother and her mother, but once in the United States, her memories began to fade.
For Heidi, whose father left before she knew him in Vietnam, her adoption by a Caucasian single mother once again left her without a father in her life. Even more difficult, her adoptive mother had an abusive childhood herself, and she lacked the warmth and comfort that little Heidi so desperately needed. Heidi was taught to hide her own ethnicity and try to fit in in Pulaski, Tennesse, where she grew up. Pulaski is the home of the Ku Klux Klan, not exactly a progressive area for a young mixed-race girl who was confused and lonely. When she became a young teen, her mother broke off all relations with her, leaving Heidi very alone and distraught.
Dolgin and Franco's Documentary Follows a Vietnamese Girl's Transformation in the U.S.
During her growing up years, Heidi was given comfortable circumstances and was permitted to take many trips with her adoptive mother. She also grew fond of her new grandmother, with whom she maintained contact after the break with her mother. Yet Heidi also longer for an affectionate, close-knit family. She had been on the cheerleading squad in high school and had managed to develop friends over the years, but there was always a hole in her heart from her traumatic childhood, which was only exacerbated by the break her mother initiated.
When an opportunity arose for Heidi to travel to a remote part of Vietnam to be reunited with her birth mother, she seized the chance to go. Not knowing much about Vietnamese culture, and being unable to speak any Vietnamese, Heidi was ill-prepared for her reunion. But when her mother first saw her, she grabbed her and held onto her very tightly. It was everything Heidi had dreamed of.
Daughter From Danang: Woman from the U.S.A.
As the days of her brief visit went by, a strange feeling overcame the young woman. At home were her husband and two small children; she suddenly became very homesick for the U.S. and very confused by the emotions that were washing over her. While her mother looked quite a bit like her and Heidi even found some traits she had in common with her, her discomfort with Vietnam remained. She remembered her older brother and seemed to have some affectionate verbal jousts with him (via a translator), urging him to quit smoking and drinking. Was their relationship renewed?
Directors Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco end this film at a place that only leaves the viewer wanting to know more, curious if there will be another chapter to this reunion story. The mother desperately wants to keep contact with her daughter, but does this ever happen? How does Heidi make sense of who she is in light of trying to go home again? Where did that little girl go that was torn apart from all that was familiar? How does Heidi maintain intimacy in her own marriage after so many sudden and devastating experiences with those closest to her? This film leaves an emotional impact along with the frustration.
This documentary won the following awards:
- 2002 San Francisco International Film Festival Grand Prize, Gold Gate Award
- 2003 Academy Award, Best Documentary nominee
- 2002 Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize, Documentary
- 2002 Feature Selection, New Director New Film, New York
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