Synopsis
Surname Viet Given Name Nam is a self-reflexive piece that attempts to bear witness to the lives of historical and contemporary Vietnamese women. An exercise of writing and restoring Vietnamese women’s voices into the transnational narrative which was largely absent before 1989, it examines the subjugation of Vietnamese women to the war, the nation’s patriarchal ideals, foreign exoticization and the capitalist system. The film has won many accolades, including the First-Prize Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival and the Merit Award at the Bombay Film Festival.