Journey from the Fall (Vietnamese: Vượt Sóng) is an independent movie by writer/director/editor Ham Tran, about the Vietnamese reeducation camp and boat people experience following the Fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975. This drama is highly-praised among the Vietnamese diaspora as the "Schindler's List" for the Vietnamese community, and was released on March 23, 2007 by ImaginAsian to sold-out screenings. The film is notable for being financed entirely by the Vietnamese American community.
The movie traces the story of a family's struggle for survival in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975 to North Vietnam's Communist regime. After her husband, Long, is imprisoned in a reeducation camp, Mai, her son Lai and her mother-in-law escape Vietnam by boat in the hopes of starting a new life in Southern California. Believing his family dead, Long gives up in the face of brutal conditions, while Mai struggles to keep her family from crumbling under the pressures of life in a new country. When Long learns his family is alive in America, he is reinvigorated and decides he must join them at any cost, but is shot by guards on his first attempt to escape.
An early cut of the film was screened in April 2005 in sold-out one-day-only showings in Little Saigon, Washington, DC and San Jose to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. The movie was highly-praised by the Vietnamese diaspora as an accurate presentation of the experiences that many Vietnamese people had to go through. In the process of making the film, the director interviewed more than 400 former boat people, some of whom are cast in the movie even though they are not professional actors.
In the opening weekend, it played in packed theaters, generating $87,442 on just four screens, giving the film the largest per theater average for that weekend ($21,861).
The movie received mostly favorable reviews. The New York Times remarked that the director "achieves the impossible" and called it a "tearjerker". The Los Angeles Times called it a "superbly wrought saga of loss and survival" and "an example of sophisticated, impassioned filmmaking involving mainly people who lived through the harrowing experiences so unsparingly depicted". The San Jose Mercury News review of the movie called it "heartbreaking" and gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Variety said it "deserves to be seen by a wider commercial audience" and is "frequently enthralling". New York Magazine had a negative review of the movie, saying that it has "several powerful sequences" but "never quite come[s] alive". The Seattle Post-Intelligencer was even more critical, suggesting that "this Journey doesn't know where it's going", criticizing the "careless cinematography" and "clumsy stag[ing]"
The movie was purchased by ImaginAsian Pictures, and released in Orange County, New York City, and San Jose on March 23, 2007 to sold-out screenings. With a total gross of $87,442 in its opening weekend, it has the highest opening weekend for any Vietnamese diasporic movie to date. The opening weekend's per-screen average of $21,861 was the highest of any movie that opened on the March 23 weekend, and the second weekend's average of $16,513 per screen was number one as well, despite expanding to two additional screens.
The film has grossed over $300,000 to date, despite a limited release at only ten locations.
Since its opening weekend on March 23, 2007 it has expanded to Dallas, Houston, Washington, DC, and San Diego, and is set to expand to Chicago, San Francisco, Mountain View, Seattle, Berkeley, Honolulu, Atlanta and other cities in the coming weeks. |
