His mother blames communism, his uncle an inheritance dispute, the others fall silent. Director Dieu Hao Do explores the fragmentation of his family. The American War in Vietnam scattered them across three continents. Nearly 50 years after their escape, contact between the seven family members has all but broken down. How have traumas from persecution and violence inscribed themselves on the bodies and souls of the survivors and their children? After the Fall of Saigon on April 30 in 1975, more than 1.5 million people fled the communist regime, many of them including the director’s family belonging to the Chinese minority there.
“We know the war in Vietnam primarily through the perspective of the American war memory machine. Other perspectives seem foreign to us. ‘Hao Are You?’ offers one of the many untold counter-narratives from the global Asian diaspora, a post-migrant perspective that asks questions about connections between family history and the past of war.”
(Dieu Hao Do, director)
Dieu Hao Do is a Chinese-German writer, director and film activist. His films explore new perspectives on historical memory of the American war in Vietnam. With the aim of empowering new BIPOC voices for storytelling, he leads film workshops and is involved as a mentor and for #diversityinfilm. He is a Berlinale Talent alumni and a member of the non-profit initiative Berlin Asian Film Network (BAFNET), which has been committed to differentiated representations of Asian Germans in film and television since 2012.