Vietnam: 50 Years of Forgetting

Directed by Mai Hugen Chi (2025)

Film Review

The 1955-75 War on Vietnam killed 4 million people (including 58,220 US troops, 521 Australian troops and 35 New Zealand troops).*

In this documentary, Vietnamese filmmaker Mai Hugen Chi portrays her bewilderment on discovering her grandmother Mai Dang Chung (born 1912-16) was a national hero for fighting both the French and US occupation of her country. Besides learning little about the US war on Vietnam in school, her family members prefer not to talk about it. This film records her efforts to understand why. She believes the US was guilty of war crimes in Vietnam and needs to be held accountable.

Vietnam was a longtime French colony before the Japanese occupied it in 1940. Vietnamese anti-fascists who joined the Western allies in defeating the Japanese in 1945 expected to be granted independence when the Japanese withdrew. Instead they found themselves battling French re-occupation.

When they successfully overthrew French colonial rule in 1945, the Geneva peace split the country in half, with North Vietnam to be ruled by communist leader Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam to be ruled by a CIA-approved puppet.

The filmmaker’s grandmother was killed in 1968 during the North Vietnamese Tet Offense at Da Nang. A great aunt she interviews was buried under rubble and lost five family members during the brutal US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong in 1972. She admits to reluctance discussing the experience because “it’s our personal grief.” While sympathetic with her profound grief, Chi also worries about about Vietnam losing its history.

Another aunt was married a South Vietnamese army officer evacuated by the Americans (owing to his fear of retaliation by the North Vietnamese). The aunt, who lived in Saigon. speaks of rumors spread by the South Vietnamese government falsely portraying North Vietnamese troops as rapists and looters. Quickly seeing through these vicious lies, South Vietnamese civilians turned out in their thousands to cheer the North Vietnamese a they entered Saigon.

Chi also interviews two uncles affected by widespread spraying of toxic Agent Orange across Vietnam. One uncle suffered severe birth defects from his parents’ exposure; another has an adult child so severely affected he can’t walk, talk or feed himself.

About a third of the film is archival footage of civilians caught in US airstrikes.

*Both Australian and New Zealand troops were conscripted (as were Americans) and forced to serve in Vietnam