Pao's Story (2007)

Do Thi Hai Yen, Hoa Thuy Do, Thanh Kha Ly, Nhu Quynh Nguyen

Painful family secrets gradually shape the emerging identity of a young Vietnamese peasant who becomes swept up by external forces in director Ngo Quang Hai's meditative family drama. Pao (Do Thi Hai ... read more Yen) is a young adolescent on the verge of adulthood. When Pao's mother is carried away in the wash of a raging river, the family is devastated and the young girl finds her once-predictable life instantly taking an unexpected turn. In the aftermath of the sudden tragedy, time shifts back to the days before Pao was born to reveal that the past isn't quite as simple as the young girl had been led to believe. It seems that Pao's biological mother was not the woman who drowned, but a local merchant who specializes in shoes. Now Pao is determined to bring a sense of stability back into her life, and as she sets out to locate her birth mother, a darkened world of deception, secrets, and double lives is gradually illuminated. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi