Boat People

Boat People follows Shiomi Akutagawa, a Japanese photojournalist who was in Da Nang in 1975 as the war ended and returns to Vietnam a few years later to document the country. He becomes attached to a poor Vietnamese family, particularly a young girl named Cam Nuong, and his reporting gradually exposes the hardship, forced labour and danger that lie beneath the official image of life after liberation.

Directed by Ann Hui, the film was made in Hong Kong and written by Chiu Kang-Chien, with Hsia Meng producing. It was the fourth film in Hui's directing career, arriving after a run of television projects in 1978 and preceding the 1990 martial arts film Swordsman. The cast is led by George Lam Tsz-Cheung as Akutagawa and Season Ma as Cam Nuong, with Cora Miao, Andy Lau, Tung-Sheng Chang and Qi Mengshi in supporting roles. Andy Lau appears early in his career here.

Released in October 1982, the drama runs 109 minutes and took about 2 million dollars at the worldwide box office. On TMDB it holds a rating of 7.6 out of 10 from roughly 60 votes, a small sample that nonetheless points to a favourable response among those who have seen it.