Boat People

Vietnam, 1978. Shiomi Akutagawa, a Japanese photojournalist, arrives in Da Nang to document the country being rebuilt after the war. Official guides take him to the places arranged for him. Then he starts moving around alone, and what he sees does not match the prepared picture: new economic zones, hunger, and people trying to get out. Ann Hui directs. Lam Chi-cheung, Season Ma and Andy Lau, in his first film, are in the cast. This is the last of three works Hui made about Vietnam. The other two were for television and cinema, and the three are known as her Vietnam trilogy. Its largest problem was political. It was selected for the 1983 Cannes Film Festival and then withdrawn from competition on the grounds that it was politically too sensitive, a decision widely criticised at the time. It could not be shot in Vietnam; Hui filmed on Hainan Island in China. Its strength is not that it is anti propaganda but its point of view. Shiomi is not a hero. He is a journalist who cannot decide what to photograph, and who is far too late once he does. Who it is for: viewers curious about the Hong Kong New Wave and films about the aftermath of the Vietnam war. Who it is not for: it is genuinely bleak and ends heavily, and violence and the death of children are shown directly.