Hanoi Spring: Two Journeys in War and Peace, 1968-2015

This is the tale of two journeys to Hanoi made by an American journalist at both ends of a long life -- as a young man in 1968 at the height of a decade-long war between a poor, undeveloped Asian nation and the world's leading superpower; and half a century later, as Vietnam enters the on-ramp to a turbo-charged global economy. Ironies abound. While the United States was being torn apart by the moral and strategic contradictions of the Vietnam war, Hanoi, epicenter of resistance to American domination, experienced a fleeting season of tranquility, its own "Hanoi Spring." Captured in rare black-and-white photographs of everyday life in a city and country under siege, this film offers a window into a time and place until now largely invisible even to its own people. Half a century later, in 2015, the filmmaker returned to Hanoi to find that the Vietnamese have largely let go of the past in order to embrace a more promising future. A war that killed three million of their countrymen only strengthened their will to live and finally to thrive. Refusing to define themselves as victims, Hanoi's younger generations are free at last to pursue their dreams wherever they may take them.