Boat People

Three years after his Danang coverage, Shiomi Akutagawa is invited back to Vietnam to report on life after the war. He is guided by a government minder to a New Economic Zone near Danang and witnesses a staged scene of schoolchildren singing praises to Ho Chi Minh.

The smiling children scene is revealed as a fabrication meant to fool the foreign press. Akutagawa notes the cheerful performance as staged propaganda. The minder presents it as evidence of thriving life in the zone.

In Danang, Akutagawa witnesses a fire and is beaten by police for taking photographs without permission. He also sees officers brutalize a captive described as a 'reactionary'. The violence underscores the regime's control over information.

A family is forced to leave the city for the New Economic Zone, and Akutagawa wonders why they would not want to go, recalling the earlier smiling children. The scene foreshadows the coercive reality behind the propaganda.

In the city, Akutagawa meets Cam Nuong and her family. Her mother secretly works as a prostitute to raise her children, illustrating hardship beneath the surface.

Cam Nuong shows him the grisly underbelly of life under communism, including children searching for valuables in freshly executed corpses in the 'chicken farm'. The revelation shocks him and deepens his understanding of the regime's brutality.

Nhac, Cam Nuong's younger brother, finds an unexploded ordnance while scavenging and is killed. The incident exposes the ever-present danger of the war-torn city and the cost of survival.

At the chicken farm, Akutagawa meets To Minh, a young man just released from the New Economic Zone. After To Minh tries to rob Akutagawa's camera, he is tried and re-sent to the NEZ. Akutagawa uses his official connections to follow him there.

At the NEZ, inmates are mistreated and degraded. Akutagawa returns to the earlier site of the smiling children and finds them sleeping unclothed in overcrowded barracks.

To Minh plans an escape to flee the country with a friend named Thanh. Thanh is blown up while dismantling landmines, ending the plan. To Minh then tries to escape by boat, but is shot at by a patrol boat, killing all aboard and seizing their valuables.

Cam Nuong's mother is arrested for prostitution and forced to confess publicly. She commits suicide by impaling herself with a hook, a brutal statement of the regime's cruelty.

Akutagawa decides to sell his camera to help Cam Nuong and her brother leave Vietnam. On the night of the ship's departure, he carries a container of diesel to the vessel. He is shot, the diesel detonates, and he dies in a burning explosion.

The film ends with Cam Nuong and her brother safely aboard the boat, looking forward to a freer life. They have escaped the city’s terror, but their future remains uncertain as they head toward an unknown fate.