The Granddraga of a Vietnamese hero explores the lasting legacy of the Vietnam War in his family and his country.
The 50 -minute documentary of Forgetting explores the lasting impact of the Vietnam War on the life of contemporary Vietnamese. Driven by a letter from an American veteran, the filmmaker Mai flees Chi embarks on a personal and national investigation.
The search for Chi begins by unraveling the story of his grandfather hero who fought for the winner, a figure wrapped in family silence. As that soon complies with its unsatisfactory end, it embarks on a trip through Vietnam and meet people whose lives were molded by some of the most traumatic events of the war: the battle of the hue in 1968, the Christmas bombing in 1972 and the fall of Saigon in 1975. Their experiences, full of resilience and loss, Chi’s strength with the truths of its own buried family. Discover the history of his married aunt with a pilot on the south side that fled, highlighting the impact of fracture of war on Vietnamese families in all generations.
The exploration becomes deeply personal. Chi faces a tough reality: his own suffers from the weakening effects of the orange agent, a cruel consequence of war that continues to inflict pain into innumerable Vietnamese. When filling the thesis of several narratives together, 50 years of forgetting transcends the Vietnam War to explore universal conflict issues and their lasting legacies. Will adjustment lessons be forgotten? Can Vietnam build a collective memory that honors the sacrifices of millions of people when those who suffered years of brutity last the Vietnam War are trying to forget so much?
