Just like Heidi wasn't prepared for the way she was treated in Vietnam, I wasn't prepared for watching this emotionally violent documentary. I expected a "good feeling" documentary, showing what could be perceived as some kind of reconciliation between USA and Vietnam, by the public.. How can a daughter-finds-back-her-mother ever turn our to be a sad story? I had better braced myself.The first moments of the reunion, at the airport, already start to show a distance between the mother and daughter. Such violent emotions.. You can feel the daughter shying away. I was thinking that the documentary would hide the bad stuff and only focus on superficial emotions. It did not, and that's why it's such a great documentary.First off, it doesn't present a negative view of Americans nor Vietnamese. It just shows a few individuals from those two cultures, without attempting to make them look bad or worse. Heidi is not the typical American girl and neither is her mother the typical Vietnamese mother. It isn't any more Vietnamese than American to have strong emotions like Mai and pour out every time. Such characters exist in both cultures. Just watch Oprah and Dr. Phil and you'll see lots of crying and overreacting. As a matter of fact, many Vietnamese consider improper the display of strong emotions in public.Now this being said, the movie shows what culture shock is all about.Heidi has been raised in America, where bread is white and meat comes in burgers. She can't stand the smell of fresh fish in a hot market. She can't stand being in Vietnam for so long, with such heat, humidity, without her commodities. Many Americans and Europeans would feel just the same. To show it on film is not a stab at American culture or a display of American egocentricity. It is a mere fact of life : if you grow up in comfort, even at the expense of freshness and excitement, it is hard to give it up.On the other hand, the whole "fillial obligation" thing in Vietnam is real, but it is not just about the money. I don't think Heidi was crying because she was being asked money, but rather because she saw them clinging desperately at her as if she were a Saviour. No one can handle that kind of emotional pressure, combined with all the extra attention she kept getting. However, she just needed say No and they backed off.I think that the two sides need to work a little to make this a better relationship. I wonder how the viewing of this movie was perceived by both parties. It must be terribly difficult for them to watch.

I work in the adoption field and I found this documentary to be a very interesting piece about an adoptee who is reunited with her birth family. I also found the final part of this documentary quite shocking and hard to take. However, as many others have commented, Heidi was poorly prepared for the moment when her birth siblings asked her to take care of her Mom or to send money to support her. To top it off, the person who had accompanied her left early without apparently warning her that this would happen. I don't want to judge Heidi, but I do hope as many other commenters have indicated, that Heidi will in time try to come to terms with her birth family. It is great that she has the love and support of her husband and two daughters, but it is very sad that her adoptive mother failed her miserably. If she is to be a more complete human being, Heidi needs to learn more about her Asian roots and culture and to form a meaningful relationship with her birth family. They were all victims!

Daughter from Danang is a poignant portrayal of a woman who searches for her estranged birth mother in Vietnam. In the end, she does not discover a happy-go-lucky "memory" to take back home to America. Not all stories have a happy ending, and in this case the ending is tragic. Although this film is well constructed, I would probably have flipped channels if I had tuned in from the beginning on PBS. Instead, I had rented this from Netflix and stuck it out to the end despite the rather boring set up of a family reunion. However, getting the back-story early on is helpful and the preliminary interviews with Heidi are a striking character study. This does not become truly apparent until we reach the end.The reason that I would consider this a striking character study is because of Heidi's naive and truly American views on this reunion. Heidi seems to believe meeting her Vietnamese mother is a panacea for the pain and confusion she endured due to the separation. She only speaks in terms of "bad memories" of Vietnam and the new "good memories" she hopes to gain. She is hopeful, positive, and rather unthinking in what she will face in Vietnam. She has taken no time to research Vietnamese culture, she assumes everything will be exciting, new, and does not anticipate challenges. This becomes more clear at the end when the insufficient cultural awareness of Heidi surfaces in her final meeting with the family. Her character represents the ignorant and dismissive attitudes of many American's towards other cultures.When she comes to Vietnam, she reunites with her family. Her mother is proud, her family happy to see her. They feast with her, take her around their village and homes and try to communicate about the past and present. After a few days of being with her "smothering" mother in the heat and humidity of Vietnam, eating strange foods, and being away from her children, she begins to emotionally buckle. The last straw is when she discovers her family wishes to have financial support from her for her mother. Heidi breaks down in a frenzy of tears and is unable to understand why they would dare ask her for money. She does not stop to think about the cultural differences at hand - and rejects her mother and her family.This is tragic and leaves me to wonder why the accompanying interpreter and journalist (Tran Tuong Nhu) did not educate Heidi about this possibility. In Asian cultures it is common for the youth to support the elders and asking for money does not have the same negative connotation. It is almost as if this information was withheld from Heidi so that a dramatic moment could play out on the screen. It makes for a great documentary scene, but it is disturbing that Heidi seems to gain very little from the experience, crying "I only wanted good memories, now all I have are bad memories". For Heidi, this was a waste of a plane ticket to get this blubbering insight. For the audience, it is a glaring portrait of an American learning about her convoluted past, meeting her estranged family, finding out it is not easy to do this, and finally running away when faced with a cultural challenge.I have some qualms about the misinterpretation of the language in the film, the interpreter that was hired for the final family meeting was not good at interpreting the Vietnamese nuances into English. Regardless I think Heidi was ready to run long before the issue of money came into to forefront. Emotionally she was not equipped to deal with the poverty and affection of her natal family, and culturally she was not able to understand their request for financial support.I can sympathize to a degree with Heidi about the prospect of financial commitment to people she hardly knows, but in Vietnam $40 is one months salary for some people. Of course Heidi would never take the time to figure this out much less take the time to figure out why they would ask her for money in such a frank manner. I think in truth, she really does not want to commit to being associated with this Vietnamese family, period. She uses the offensive financial request as a very good excuse to separate herself from her mother.I am glad I watched this film, however I am disappointed that Heidi remains unchanged and ignorant.

Daughter From Danang was, in my opinion, an exceptional, well-done documentary in it's honesty. It did not try to sugar-coat anything. At the end, what I personally would have liked to do was to spank Heidi on her well-fed American butt! Her mother, who is responsible for Heidi's lovely, easy life in America, was totally scorned by this heartless daughter. I can understand the differences between the two countries, but to totally eliminate her mother from her life without correspondence, let alone a monthly stipend, was unbelievable! It was a selfish and cruel decision. Even $20.00/month with a little note would mean so much to this family. And Heidi could not bring herself to promise to do even this. What kind of example is she setting for her children? How can she live with herself?