Like The Falling Raindrops

An undercover spy of the Revolution approaches a ruthless guard at Côn Đảo prison to extract information.

An engineer returns home after studying abroad in France. Not wanting to do corporate work, he decides to open a car service in a small highland city where he chances upon an old friend working as a smuggler.

An anthology of five short films ("The Hands of a Stranger", "The Other War", "A Distant Province", "The Eighth District", and "PHILCAG"), made jointly by Vietnamese and American filmmakers. Collectively, the films "explore the faces of the Vietnam war that lie behind the fighting--those that must fight a war against fear, hunger, and despair. [They are] told through the stories of five "faces": a Filipino doctor and a Vietnamese child; a Vietnamese soldier and a Vietnamese villager; an American technical expert; a Saigon youth; and a Philippine Civic Action Group (PHILCAG) contingent" (US National Archives). The film is hosted by an unnamed man speaking to a Filipino audience (in English); so the anthology likely was screened in and/or partly produced with the Philippines.

“This film features the Vietnamese Army, referred to as "sons" of the famous Trung sisters of Vietnamese history” (US National Archives). "The film draws from Vietnamese mythology to allegorize South Vietnam’s struggle with the North, drawing connections between the Trung sisters’ heroic resistance to the Chinese invasion in 40 CE to the conflict the South faced. Many of its sequences reveal the fingerprints of USIA and the American imaginary of Vietnam, moving between sweeping pastoral shots, montages of military preparedness, and scenes of graphic simulated violence upon people of the South—making the film ultimately prowar. However, the documentary renders a complicated, almost paradoxical visual expression of homeland defense. Instead of framing victory as likely and death as something to avoid, the allusions to familiar mythology cosmically situate the South’s resistance as a tragic duty that spans the long history of their nation" (Vukoder and Gharabaghi).