In Emotional Oscar Contender ‘Child Of Dust,’ Amerasian Man Born In Wartime Vietnam Seeks Reunion With American G.I. Who Left Him Behind

No one can say for certain how many so-called Amerasian children were fathered during the Vietnam war in relationships between U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese women. Some estimates put the number at 100,000, others even higher – perhaps half a million.

What is known for certain is that those children who grew up in Vietnam faced stigma and prejudice after the North Vietnamese victory in the war. They were a living symbol of the catastrophic U.S. military intervention in the country, and their mothers were looked down upon as having fraternized with the enemy.

Most of the Amerasian children would never know their fathers. The Oscar-contending documentary Child of Dust follows the story of Sang Ngô Thanh, a man fathered by an American G.I. in the 1960s who never gave up hope of one day meeting his dad. Through DNA testing unavailable until recent times, that poignant wish seemed within the realm of possibility.

The documentary is written and directed by young Polish filmmaker Weronika Mliczewska and shot by her husband, cinematographer Mikael Lypinski. Mliczewska was working on a short documentary in Vietnam when she became aware of the children sired by American servicemen. She also learned of the central, almost mythic role of the father in that country.

“In Vietnam, the father figure is so important that it is actually building the whole identity for you,” Mliczewska explained during a Q&A earlier this week at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, moderated by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jessica Kingdon. “I met Amerasians and there was one recurring thing in all the interviews while doing my research — all of them were very emotional about their missing father, about the father they never knew. And that was very idealized due to the Vietnamese culture, but yet this father also made them suffer for all their lives.”

With the aid of a group that facilitates DNA testing for Amerasian people, Sang was able to connect with his father – Nelson Torres, then in his 80s and in precarious health, living in a Southern U.S. state. Sang also learned he had three half-siblings – two brothers and a sister. First, he and his father reconnected over Skype, a deeply emotional moment for Sang. Later, father and son – with the support of Torres’s American-born children – made plans to meet in the U.S.

For Sang, such a trip would mean separating at least temporarily and perhaps for a much longer period from his wife, his daughter and a beloved young grandchild who was very attached to his grandpa.

“When he was [departing for] the U.S. from Vietnam, through translators, I asked him, ‘Are you sure you want to step on this plane? Are you really sure you want to go? You don’t have to. You found [your] father, he accepted you. You don’t have to do that. It’s all good now, you were accepted,’” Mliczewska recalled. “And he said, ‘Weronika, that was the thing that kept me going for all my life. That was my biggest dream to meet my father and to hug him. I have to do it in order to bring all my pieces of my identity together. And once I do it, I’ll see what’s next.’”

The director commented on what she saw as Sang’s motivation for participating in the film.

“He wanted his voice out [for the] first time in his life,” she said. “So that was my mission really, to do that in the best way I can.”

Many former American G.I.’s contacted by their children sired in Vietnam do not want a reunification or anything to do with the offspring they left behind. Sang’s father was different and, in the film, Torres tells his son that he truly loved his mother. Mliczewska spoke to the motivation of Sang’s father and his American-born kids to take part in the film.

“For them, it was, ‘We want to be the voice for other veterans to accept their sons and daughters, their children. We want to give an example,’” she said. “And for me that was like, ‘Wow, this is courageous. You guys are really very courageous and I’m very grateful for that.’”

The film is produced by Mliczewska and Vietnam-based producer Chi Minh De Leo. American filmmaker Bao Nguyen, a child of Vietnamese immigrants, also came on board as a producer.

“I was frankly skeptical at first because Weronika not being Vietnamese, and this is such an intimate story,” Nguyen said at the Q&A. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to watch it, and I will sort of try not to have any bias.’ And when I watched really sort of an assembly of what she had shot so far, I was really taken aback by how intimate and how sensitive Weronika’s approach to the story was.”

Child of Dust has won prizes at film festivals around the world, including the Audience Choice Award at the Chicago International Film Festival; three awards at the Krakow Film Festival, among them the Golden Horn for Best International Film in Competition; two awards at the Festival International Signes de Nuit in Paris, including the top award in documentary competition. At the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece, where Child of Dust premiered, it won Special Mention in International Competition.

One place the film has not yet been seen is in Vietnam. “We were testing and trying to bring the film to Vietnam and it didn’t pass censorship,” Mliczewska said. “So right now we cannot actually screen it there, and that also says something. I remember in the very beginning, [producer] Chi Minh said nobody would touch this topic in Vietnam.”

“The way that Amerasians were treated post-war is very delicate [in Vietnam],” Nguyen noted. “And so usually any subject matter that talks about this particular subject is flagged right away. But we do hope that there has been a lot of reconciliation in the past 50 years and that this film, again, handles the subject in such a delicate way that I think these conversations need to happen in order for true reconciliation to happen.”

Mliczewska added, “Maybe we need to get some traction outside of Vietnam and then it will be our last step. Who knows. Hopefully.”