Journey from the Fall () is a 2006 independent film by writer/director/editor Ham Tran, about the Vietnamese re-education camp and boat people experience following the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. This drama was released on March 23, 2007, by ImaginAsian to sold-out screenings. The film is notable for having been financed entirely by the Vietnamese American community. Plot The film traces the story of a family's struggle for survival in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, to North Vietnam's communist regime. After her South Vietnamese Army husband Long, is imprisoned in a North Vietnamese re-education camp, Mai, her son Lai, and her mother-in-law escape Vietnam by boat in the hopes of starting a new life in Southern California. Believing his family is dead, Long gives up in the face of brutal conditions, while Mai struggles to keep her family from crumbling under the pressures of life in a new country. When Long learns his family is alive in America, he is reinvigorated and decides he must join them at any cost. Cast Diem Lien as Mai Nguyen Kieu Chinh as Ba Noi (Grandmother) Long Nguyen as Long Nguyen Nguyen Thai Nguyen as Lai Nguyen Cat Ly as Phuong Xavier Ortiz as Bully Reception The film was received with critical acclaim. In the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, it received a score of 92% with a certified "Fresh" rating with the consensus being that "Ham Tran's ambitious film proves to be extremely powerful due to stunning photography and passionate performances" and is currently ranked 27th in the Top 100 Best Movies of 2007. Matt Zoller Seitz of The New York Times remarked that the director "achieves the impossible" and called it a "tearjerker". The Los Angeles Times called it a "superbly wrought saga of loss and survival" and "an example of sophisticated, impassioned filmmaking involving mainly people who lived through the harrowing experiences so unsparingly depicted". Bruce Newman of the San Jose Mercury News called it "heartbreaking" and gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Russell Edwards from Variety said it "deserves to be seen by a wider commercial audience" and is "frequently enthralling". New York magazine had a negative review of the film, saying that it has "several powerful sequences" but "never quite come[s] alive". Bill White of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was even more critical, suggesting that "this Journey doesn't know where it's