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The Stranger By Rinat Abulafia. Globes, 29/9/05

The Journey of Vaan Nguyen opens this evening in cinemas. Director Duki Dror tells about his heroes and his wish to control, at least once, the end of the story.

The Journey of Vaan Nguyen, like Dror’s previous films, deals with the narrative of expulsion, detachment and the desperate search for a lost identity. The feeling of alienation and lack of belonging has no definition, but whoever experienced it knows how to identify it and how to hear its cry. In a previous film, “My Fantasia”, Dror tried to dismantle his personal baggage in a process that lasted for 10 years, dealing with his own past and the past of his father who immigrated from Iraq. “It is hard for me to ignore the influence of my past and my family’s past. It is not a conscious process. In daily life it shows in the directions that I am drawn to.,” he says, “my self determination is composed of crossed identities. It’s not reflected in a single identity. How would I identify myself? By my Iraqi roots? My Israeli upbringing?” Dror deals with defining his own complex identity through the characters in his films.

Intricate cycles of identity
In “The Journey of Vaan Nguyen,” Dror follows Vaan’s father, Hoimai Nguyen, back to Vietnam. In 1977, prime minister Menachem Begin decided to give asylum, a safe haven and an Israeli citizenship to some of the refugees who escaped the Vietnam war, the “boat people”. Hoimai settled in Israel. The story unfolds through the voice and blog writing of Vaan, a native Israeli, one of Hoimai’s 5 daughters. Vann joins her father in a voyage to his erased past, to the village from where he was expelled some 40 years ago during the Vietnam War. There she will stand with him against the mayor of the village, the “bad man” who pointed a gun to Hoimai’s head and is responsible for his expulsion. Vaan intends to help her father reclaim the lands of the family that were abandoned behind.

Although the film is from the point of view of the father, Dror chose to title the film after the daughter. “When I saw her for the first time, she had an outburst of a drama. She has a great sense of confidence, and at the same time a great vulnerability, making a strong and vibrant cinematic character”. “The story of the father is clear – he has a goal to achieve, a dream and a longing for something apparent. He feels that there’s a place where his real life exists, a place where he is not a stranger.
Vaan was born here and carries the family story on her back. Through the years she was an anchor to her parents and was caught between cycles of identities which never meet; her vibrant Israeli nature constantly conflicts with her parents who could never assimilate and are detached from the Israeli society. This gap created an abyss of alienation.

Dror arrived into making documentaries by coincidence. “I studied cinema, theater and literature. I did not understand the narrative concept of documentary films. One day on a research job I was brought to a maximum security prison where I met life-term inmates teaching other, illiterate, inmates. I was standing in front of highly intelligent people who might have made wrong decisions in their life. I was captivated. The moment I put a camera in front of them I felt I’m learning a lot about myself. This became my first film.”
Dror was introduced to the Nguyen family story through Violet Shizer, Vaan’s high school teacher in Yaffo. Shizer wrote the script based on her relationship with Vaan.

“I feel the character in front of me and intuitively identify with her/his desire to realize a personal need. The visualization comes from the content, I don’t come with preconceptions. I start with a direction, then the concept of the style gradually appears and cristalizes during the editing. I prepare a shooting plan in great pedantry before I arrive to the set. I treat every scene as a unit, a short film. I ask myself what the character desires and try to unlock the dramatic essence. Then in shootings it allows me to connect freely to the scene and basically to shoot as if I collect the drama as it unfolds.
The shooting lasted 2 years. When Dror went to Vietnam he didn’t know how the story will develop. The reunion with the old home in Vietname turned out to be frustrating and left an open and bleeding wound. The wish to stand with pride against the “bad-man”, remained an unresolved wish and the land that was robbed of the family was not returned to their owner, who became a stranger in his own land.

Wants the hero to succeed
In his film “Raging Dove”, Dror followed Johar Abu Lashin, an Israeli-Arab who could have become a mega-star boxer, but as his American wife says early in the film; “The problem was that he was an Arab.” After his victories in America Johar chose to return to Israel, to define his Palestinian identity and to organize a big fight in Gaza which Arafat promised to realize. In one of the scenes, Johar, who throughout the film is charismatic, is broken when he sees his dream slowly evaporating and says “I feel like a hero without a home.” Then he adds “I don’t feel like a hero now.”
Dror: “It is hard to see your hero falling. I really wanted him to succeed. We had plans to film the bout in Gaza and the festive welcoming of Johar in the streets. It is painful to be present in such moments, but there’s a un-written agreement between the filmmaker and the subject that you don’t intervene in the situation. The portrait that I’m making must contain the core of the character. This is an immortal core - the essence that will always exist.”

Dror’s films have an aroma of feature fiction films. They are visually stunning and dramatically captivating. “The Journey of Vaan Nguyen” starts with a smooth camera movement going through the family home and capturing small moments which need no explanation. Why then not make a fiction film? Dror says that he does wish to touch a large audience, but he thinks that documentary has the potential to do it too. “the process is happening everywhere in the world. Finally audience in cinemas is finding the emotion and story in documentaries.”

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