What makes it different from others?

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

not horrible nor great

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This was a very sad Documentary, here you have this girl who came to the U.S. and never really experienced any real love from her Adoptive mother. Goes to see her Vietnamese mother and ends up with all these conditions placed on her how sad.Re: the family, I'm just wondering if they would have their hands out if she lived in France after the war. It seems to be a view that many countries have of this country maybe if they knew that we have 37 million living below the poverty level here it would stamp out the gravy train notion.Moreover she lived in Army housing with her husband and probably didn't have much herself. Its a shame that money changes all of this, I hope and pray that they can just accept her and love her without expecting her to dig deep in her pocket to please them

I really liked this movie. It didn't pander to anybody and showed a bare bones look at the hardship and deprivation of a family in rural Vietnam as they received a visit from an American relation who they had not seen since childhood. The American woman, Heidi, was looking for a no-strings attached relationship that would provide her with some sort of emotional security blanket that apparently was absent in the cold upbringing of her adoptive mother. Her mother and half-siblings bluntly requested a monthly stipend for financial assistance as she was the better-off relation in the family tree. Now, these people had not had the privilege of an education past grade school and she was given a free ride thru college by her adoptive parent. They were very hospitable although the mother was a bit overbearing. Nevertheless, I just wanted to cringe when Heidi pulled that phony Scarlet O'Hara act with the crying, whining and sniveling as soon as things got a little out of her comfort zone. Here were people on the fringes of survival and the overfed American military wife is complaining about the discomfort her mother, whom she hasn't seen in 22 years, is causing her by stopping to chat with people while shopping in a smelly food and fish market. But who knows, maybe she saw her long lost relations as being nothing more than greedy, non-productive, materialistic leeches whose interpretation of family ties extended only as far as latching on to her for financial support. Regardless of these comments, it is a good movie to view for free on PBS.

This is a beautifully shot but often difficult film to watch — mostly because, as a previous reviewer has mentioned, the Amerasian daughter, Heidi, seems ignorant of her cultural heritage and unwilling to learn. We learn that she was raised by a cold woman who kept her Vietnamese heritage a secret, but even as an adult Heidi doesn't do anything to educate herself about her family or their culture. As she's leaving on the plan for Danang, we see her only just learning how speak the language in a cursory way. The film beautifully communicates how traumatic the separation of half-American children from their Vietnamese mothers was on all sides. Heidi was denied a family, her mother was forced to sleep with an American soldier to save her other children during a war, and the family continues to live in poverty. It is very difficult to watch how shabbily Heidi treats the family after they open their lives and homes to her, but I suppose that highlights how ignorant many of the children who were brought here in "Operation Babydrop" were and are. It is particularly sad to see how judgmental she is of them — she brings them useless American gifts, but gets angry when they ask for help in supporting her mother. It is especially sad when you realize that if she had only taken the time to understand Vietnamese culture, the misunderstanding may have never come up. Overall, it's an often frustrating and difficult story to watch, but one that is well-told and forthright in its honesty.

Any documentary that keeps me glued to the set (I saw "Daughter from Danang" on PBS television) and can provoke compassion, delight, consternation, embarrassment, anger, admiration, and deep chagrin, is, to my mind, a great documentary."Daughter from Danang" fits that description. Regardless of my personal reaction to the players in this particular true-life drama, I will never see human relationships in quite the same way again. I'd challenge anybody to see it and come away indifferent.A masterwork.