Product Information

Product Title : Boat People
Artist Name(s) : Andy Lau | George Lam | Cora Miu
Release Date : February 27, 2008
Language : Cantonese
Subtitle : English
Rating : II
Publisher : Edko Films Ltd. (HK)

The third film from acclaimed Hong Kong director Ann Hui, Boat People won Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Art Direction, and New Performer at the 2nd Hong Kong Film Awards. A follow-up to 1981's The Story of Woo Viet, the humanist melodrama is set in 1978 Vietnam, three years after the fall of Saigon. Shot in almost documentary-style, the film depicts life in a postwar Vietnam devastated by poverty and brutality, and the dangerous lengths people will go through to escape the country. Released in 1982, Boat People's sensitive subject and uncompromising portrayal invited controversy and debate given the political world climate at the time, and the film's distinction of being the first Hong Kong film to be shot in Mainland China with government approval.
Ann Hui constructed Boat People's story after conducting hundreds of interviews with Vietnamese refugees, "boat people" who fled to Hong Kong in great numbers from the 1970s to 90s. The film sees postwar Vietnam through the eyes of an outsider, a Japanese journalist played by George Lam (A Queer Story), who returns to the country three years after the war's end. He is gradually overwhelmed by the tragedy, poverty, tyranny, and corruption that weigh down on the daily lives of the locals he encounters, embodied by award-winning newcomer Season Ma (Silent Love), Cora Miao (Women), and Andy Lau in his feature film debut. Unable to look the other way any longer, Akutagawa decides to help a local girl and her family leave Vietnam.

Boat People