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Journey from the Fall is the story of a family and a nation, at once excruciatingly intimate and sweeping. Showing off both Hollywood chops and an independent heart, directory Ham Tran brings the aftermath of the fall of Saigon to the screen in epic fashion. A family is split on April 30, 1975, when the last U.S. forces leave Vietnam. The father ends up in a series of re-education camps while his wife eventually escapes by boat with her son and mother-in-law. The three survive the terrifying passage to the U.S. that thousands of Vietnamese-Americans lived through, and then settle into a troubled life in Orange County, California. It's a story most Americans know something about, but told from a Vietnamese perspective, it takes on different shades of meaning. Vietnam truly comes to life in America, and vice versa, through both direct and indirect encounters between people. Families exist in both places at once, but that only makes the pain worse. Tran makes that line blur for us, too. He has a gift for action directing, but along with an outstanding cast he can make a conversation in a suburban mall as heart-stopping as a battle scene. Bits of humor, color, and Vietnamese pop music keep the tone from becoming too dark even as the film holds true to grim realities. There's only one notable flaw, a Caucasian school principal who comes off as one-dimensionally clueless. In this film, the contrast with a cast of richly drawn characters is glaring. But his ignorance at least symbolizes what so many of us don't know about the backgrounds of the thousands of Vietnamese-Americans in our schools, software companies, advertising agencies, nail salons, legislatures, hospitals, and everywhere else. Vietnamese history is now intertwined with American history. Journey from the Fall is that story, eloquently told.