Ashley Duong, a Montreal-based documentary filmmaker, has created Ba’s Book, a hybrid film that blends documentary and narrative elements to explore her father Anh Duong’s experiences during the Vietnam War and subsequent life as a refugee. The project emerged from her father’s 2024 memoir, Dear Da-Le: A Father’s Memoir of the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution, which broke a lifetime of silence about his traumatic past. The film is scheduled to screen at the Vancouver Film Festival.
The documentary-narrative explores Duong’s father’s journey through Vietnam during the civil conflict and his time as a refugee in revolutionary Iran during the 1970s before immigrating to Canada in 1980. Rather than relying solely on archival footage or traditional documentary methods, Duong employed an innovative approach that incorporates re-enactments filmed on a three-walled set designed to resemble the family’s ancestral Vietnamese home. This setting allows relatives and actors portraying their younger selves to appear together, creating a theatrical space that bridges personal history and dramatized storytelling.
A key element of the production involved family members actively participating in both the creative and performance aspects of the film. Duong’s relatives contributed to set design, casting decisions, and provided direction to actors playing their younger versions, including Montreal-based actor Duy Nguyen, who himself was born in Vietnam. The film features readings from her father’s memoir in Vietnamese to ensure his siblings could understand his account, as they do not speak or read English.
The project addresses family dynamics shaped by wartime circumstances and long-held silences. A significant focus involves the director’s aunt, who sacrificed her education to enable her brother’s studies during Vietnam’s patriarchal era. Rather than leaving these tensions unresolved, the film creates space for acknowledgment and reconciliation. Duong employed three cameras simultaneously during filming—one capturing observational footage, another with narrative focus using varied angles—allowing multiple perspectives on the family’s shared history and individual experiences of loss and separation.
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