The Betrayal: Nerakhoon was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary. It did not win.
The Betrayal (2008) is a very personal documentary, and tells the story of a Laotian who now lives in America, but was part of the turmoil in Laos when the U.S. bombarded that country with bombs during the Vietnam War. The U.S. also armed partisans and set them against the North Vietnamese who were using Laos as a hiding place to escape the U.S. bombings in that country.
But when America pulled out of Vietnam, they also abandoned all the partisans in Laos and left them to be victims of the communist party.
Thavisouk Phrasavath's father was one of those left to fend for himself, and ended up in a reeducation center. This personal story is of what happened to his family.
The amazing thing about The Betrayal is that it takes these HUGE foreign policy decisions and shows how those effect real people. How this country's decisions to get involved in other nations internal problems can have devastating consequences in the "little people."
Phrasavath is not afraid to show the effects this had on his family...the terrible effects, and the good also. He opens up his family's chest and shows its heart, beating still, though weathered. He makes a journey back to Laos to find the two sister's his mother had to leave behind to escape from certain death, along with seven other children, and he finds them. But on the road the reflective journey of how he got from one place to the other is alternately uplifting and heartbreaking.
It is a journey well worth following.
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