“Tau ban no hoi” (“Boat People”) is seen as one of the greatest Hong Kong film of all time. The Hong Kong industry has a rich industry not only with martial art films but also with crime thrillers and powerful drama’s.
A Japanese photojournalist(George Lam) revisits Vietnam after the Liberation and learns harsh truths about its regime and its “New Economic Zones”.
Ann Hui is one of the most influential Hong Kong directors of all time. “Tau ban no hoi” was the last part in her Vietnam trilogy and the greatest success. After making a documentary about the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong she decided to make movies about the subject and directed two powerful films on the subject “The Story of Woo Viet” (Chow Yun-fat) and “Boat People”. This was the first Hong Kong film that was allowed to film in mainland China.
The film depicts the horrendous situation in Vietnam, showing the poverty and the corruption in the country. The film was deemed to Chinese centric by foreign media and anti-Vietnamese even though Hui declared she described the situation after interviewing many refugees and a huge amount of research. The film launched the career of Andy Lau who replaced Chow Yun-fat. He feared to be blacklisted in Taiwan if he did this movie. But the real star of the film is Season Ma, the young actress, who steals the film as the poor girl that does everything to survive.
The film is shot almost like a documentary and has the sense of real life events. This leads to melodramatic and shocking events. This is a political critic but a human story and a look at the situation and the problems many people faced in Vietnam.
The film was a gigantic financial success and made Hui an international star. The film was not selected as ‘official selection’, but was instead presented there as the ‘film surprise’. After protests against the film’s inclusion, the Festival decided to drop it from the main competition.
