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FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE

Irvine-California.  April 12, 2013.  The latest documentary film, Stateless: Vietnamese Long-Stayers in the Philippines (US | Philippines, 2013) by Emmy-winning filmmaker, Đức H. Nguyễn, will receive the SPOTLIGHT AWARD when it World Premieres at the Vietnamese International Film Festival (ViFF), Sunday, April 14, 2013 on Closing Day at UC-Irvine, HIB100, 2-6pm.

STATELESS elucidates the story of 2,000+ forgotten Boat People who were stranded on the islands at the lowest tide of compassion fatigue in the late 1980s and thus, were denied resettlement to the West.  For over 16 years, they lived on the fringes of Filipino society, stripped of their civil rights.  By 2005, the asylum seekers were given a final chance to find “home” when U.S. immigration officials returned one last time to review their cases —the end result of 8 long years of lobbying by a maverick refugee rights lawyer, Hội Trịnh, from Australia who is also a former Boat Person.  www.VietFilmFest.com/stateless.html

Eight years in the making, Director Đức Nguyễn follows a few Stateless refugees on their quixotic quest to find “home.”   He captures their heart-breaking journeys via candid interviews during their anxiety-provoking waits for interviews with immigration officers.  We hear first-person recounts of their tragic experiences:   Some risked multiple failed journeys by sea to escape a corrupt and repressive post-War Communist Vietnam; others escaped on foot through the land-mines of Cambodia; but all would eventually arrive to the Philippines and remain stuck.   Unfortunately this group of long-stayers arrived to the refugee camps after the arbitrary deadline of March 1989, when the South East Asian refugee camps were closing.   Unable to prove their ‘bonafide refugee’ status, these Vietnamese asylum seekers were denied resettlement.

For almost two decades, they subsisted in limbo, without any legal protections of their basic human rights.  In the year of Immigration Reform here in the U.S., STATELESS gives a rare and poignant glimpse into the tragic lives of innocent people caught in the maelstrom of international politics and rejection.

STATELESS has also been selected as a finalist for the FESTIVAL GRAND JURY PRIZE in NON-FICTION at the Los Angeles Pacific Asian Film Festival (LAAPFF) and will screen on May 4^th at the Director’s Guild of America in Hollywood (2:45pm).   http://laapff.festpro.com/films/detail/stateless 2013

It makes a Northern California sneak preview at the San Francisco Global Vietnamese International Film Festival on April 28^th at the historic Roxie Theater (2:45pm).  http://www.sfgvff.wordpress.com.

STATELESS is Đức Nguyễn’s second feature-length documentary film.  His debut film, BOLINAO 52 (shot in Japan, Philippines and the U.S., 2007), won 2 Northern California Emmy-Awards for “Outstanding Documentary Film” and “Original Music Composition” (to composer,  Mark Izu) in 2009.  Bolinao 52 tells the unspeakable tale of 52 survivors aboard a ship of an original 110 Boat People that left Vietnam in 1988.  Adrift at sea for over 37 days, the remaining 52 refugees resorted to cannibalism to survive.   Rejected by Japanese, U.S. Naval and several other ships that could have potentially rescued them, they were finally saved by poor Filipino fisherman to the island of Bolinao.  Đức Nguyễn’s Bolinao 52 is another powerful tale of human resilience and forgiveness—one that offers closure and healing for both Vietnamese and American survivors of the Vietnam-American War.

Website: www.statelessdocumentary.com

STATELESS is a production of Right Here In My Pocket: http://www.rhimp.com