Boat People () is a Hong Kong film directed by Ann Hui, first shown in theatres in 1982. The film stars George Lam, Andy Lau, Cora Miao, and Season Ma. At the second Hong Kong Film Awards, Boat People won awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best New Performer, Best Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. It was also screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards, Boat People was ranked 8th in the list of 103 best Chinese-language films in the past 100 years.
Boat People was the last film in Hui's "Vietnam trilogy". It recounts the plight of the Vietnamese people after the communist takeover following the Fall of Saigon ending the Vietnam War.
Production
In the late 1970s, a great number of Vietnamese refugees flooded Hong Kong. In 1979, Hui was making the documentary A Boy from Vietnam for the RTHK network. In the process of making the film, she collected many interviews conducted with Vietnamese refugees about life in Vietnam following the Fall of Saigon. From these interviews, she directed The Story of Woo Viet (1981) starring Chow Yun-fat as Woo Viet, a Vietnamese boat person in Hong Kong, and Boat People.
The People's Republic of China, just ending a war with Vietnam, gave Hui permission to film on Hainan Island. Boat People was the first Hong Kong movie filmed in Communist China. Hui saved a role for Chow Yun-Fat, but because at that time Hong Kong actors working in mainland China were banned in Taiwan, Chow Yun-Fat declined the role out of fear for being blacklisted. Six months before filming was set to start, and after the film crew were already on location in Hainan, a cameraman suggested that Hui give the role to Andy Lau. At that time, Andy Lau was still a newcomer in the Hong Kong film industry. Hui gave Lau the role and flew him to Hainan before a proper audition or even seeing what he looked like.
Characters
Shiomi Akutagawa (George Lam): a Japanese photojournalist who returns to Vietnam to report about life after the war To Minh (Andy Lau): a young man who hopes to leave the country, sent to the New Economic Zone Cam Nuong (Season Ma): 14-year-old girl that Akutagawa meets in Danang Officer Nguyen (Shi Mengqi): a French-educated Vietnamese official who gave half his life to the revolution; disillusioned with life after the war Nguyen's mistress (Cora Miao): a Chinese woman who is involved with black-market trade, and a contact for people seeking to leave the country, secretly having an affair with To Minh
Plot
The film is shown through the point of view of a Japanese photojournalist named Shiomi Akutagawa (Lam). Three years after covering Danang during the communist takeover, 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 is shown a group of schoolchildren happily playing, singing songs praising Ho Chi Minh.
The scene that he sees is actually staged to deceive the foreign press. In Danang, he witnesses a fire and is beaten by the police for taking photos without permission. He also sees the police beating up a "reactionary". Later he sees a family being forced to leave the city to a New Economic Zone and wonders why they would not want to go there, recalling the happy children that he saw.
In the city, he meets Cam Nuong (Ma) and her family. Her mother secretly works as a prostitute to raise her children. She has two younger brothers, the older one, Nhac, is a street-smart boy who is conversant in American slang, while the younger boy, Lang, was fathered by a Korean that her mother serviced. From Cam Nuong, Akutagawa learns the grisly details of life under communism in Danang, including children searching for valuables in freshly executed corpses in the "chicken farm". One day, Nhac finds an unexploded ordnance while scavenging in the garbage and is killed.
At the "chicken farm", Akutagawa meets To Minh (Lau), a young man who was just released from the New Economic Zone. After To Minh attempts to rob Akutagawa's camera, he is tried and re-sent to the New Economic Zone. Akutagawa uses his connections with an official to follow him there. At the New Economic Zone, he witnesses the inmates being mistreated. He returns to the location where the smiling children were singing for him earlier, and finds to his horror them sleeping unclothed in overcrowded barracks.