For those of us who dread another terse journalistic foray into Vietnam's war-torn heart of darkness, relax! From Hollywood To Hanoi takes us on a positive journey that is both refreshing and revealing.The filmmaker, Tiana Alexandra, left her homeland as a youngster after her father, the Minister of Media for President Diem's southern regime, lost confidence in his government. The family resettled in Virginia – far from Saigon's bomb-rattled windows and burning monks. But America's Utopian promise did not settle Tiana's restless soul.Despite her blossoming success as an actress in Hollywood, and her father's admonitions not to return to the communist stronghold, Tiana ventured back to her forbidden homeland. Her unswerving curiosity leads us on a journey deep into the heart and soul of Vietnam: a land whose people were battered by history, yet never lost the intrinsic core of their forgiving culture.At the end of her odyssey, Tiana uses the weapons of love and poetry to open the doors and hearts of her father's dreaded northern enemies. The hydra-headed communist monster purrs like a kitten in Tiana's hands, putting us in touch with the softer side of feared leaders like Pham Van Dong, Le Duc Tho, and Ho Chi Minh's military mastermind, General Vo Nguyen Giap. We can all learn from their sincere messages of peace, tolerance and reconciliation.

A revealing, sometimes disturbing, heartfelt glimpse at early '90s Vietnam, from the viewpoint of a most interesting individual—a personality whose rich and fascinating path back to her native homeland, nearly threatens to outshine the narrative detailing the tremendously dramatic, cultural and political landscape of the war-torn country.Interviews with family living in both America and Asia, politicians and military leaders from each country, and biracial offspring produced by the war (either transplanted to the US, or abandoned by GIs in Vietnam), provide poignant insight and perspective from both sides.Equally impressive is the surprisingly neutral tone presented by the director (considering obvious personal connections)—diplomatically, and yet somehow inherently subversively allowing viewpoints to air with a viscerally provocative, journalistic lack of judgment, that empowers the audience to form their own opinions.

Tiana was born in South Vietnam, but was raised in the United States after her family fled Vietnam to escape the Communist threat. After she made her way into Hollywoodk, she began to ask questions about her identity and her homeland, which lead eventually to her making a decision to visit Vietnam once again. This documentary follows her search.When this documentary gets to Vietnam, it goes in some pretty surprising situations. Gone is the focus on her as slowly the country is revealed in all it's post-war glory, where old beliefs still ferment, where historical context is different from ours, and where every aspect of the war as resulted in a generation of people with vastly differing views of what occurred, all of them searching for the truth...Too bad that's not really what the documentary is focusing on. I mean, it is... it just isn't. The documentary has some very appealing and shocking narrative mixed in with a largely structureless program. Tiana reveals more than she intended to, and I don't believe she actually expected to get what she ended up with. Therefore, the documentary is surprising and interesting, but it has very little actually sorted out.The subjective nature then makes it rather appealing, and therefore it's very interesting to watch. However, it hasn't been fully explored, so don't expect any resolution.--PolarisDiB

I find this to be a very interesting film, first because of my time in Viet Nam and second because it explores the thoughts and feelings of a young woman from Viet Nam who returns to find her roots. The film is a record of her visit, post war, over the objection of her father. She makes contact with the family left behind and takes a no holds barred look at conditions of the country she left as a child. A wonderful expose of what it means to be a refugee and to return to the home of one's birth even though the native country and the adopted country are at odds. This film transcends politics but doesn't shy from them as it looks at culture of those left behind and those who have moved on to a new life. I think that everyone should view this film and get a feel of what it means to have been a child of a long, controversial war.