(gentle music) - This documentary is called "Sea Rose Ashes."

We came from the sea, an immersive, expansive, extremely intimidating entity.

My mom's name, Hong, means Rose, and her ashes, for me, suggests that there is a cycle of time and life, like pouring into life from out of the sea, being the rose and returning to kind of a state of finality on the other side.

I just need a rehearsal on this.

I just wanna see the action.

So, let's start.

Take it from... Since 2010, I've largely considered myself to be a narrative filmmaker.

I work in the world of fiction, of make believe.

(upbeat music) And lo and behold, my life runs into reality, which is this struggle to reveal to myself the mystery of my mom's life and death.

And that process led me to the documentary filmmaking world.

(atmosphere rumbling) During a lull of work, I decided I would take this personal Southeast Alaskan adventure.

On March 17th, 2020, I flew into Juneau, Alaska, landed, my friend picks me up, tells me, "Hey, so bad news, The entire state is shut down during COVID.

There is very few people there doing anything publicly."

And so I pretty much was a stranger in a strange land, in a strange time.

When there was no one else and nothing else to seduce you, not even your devices, not even technology.

Wherever I went, there I was.

It was just my own demons looking right back at me.

And that was the tormented life of my own mother.

(reflective music) We arrived in the United States in November of 1981 as boat refugees, by escaping the Communist government in Vietnam.

She did her best to try and assimilate.

But, you know, the language is a challenge.

Cultural connection is a challenge.

And so, you know, a group of immigrants kind of have to find a way to socially cooperate and cohere to weather the storm of a foreign land.

And so one of the men that she naturally gravitated towards has been here for about a year.

He has a job, he seems to know the language a little better, and he seems very interested in her, in me.

He was a man that I hung out with, you know, and he was a father figure to me.

We were in the bottom floor in one of these apartments here, I don't remember which one.

At some point in time my mother decided that he wasn't the right man for her, and she tried to break up with him, but no matter what she did, he wouldn't go away.

And sadly, tragically, this is also where my mom died.

(reflective music continues) Through the assistance of a private investigator friend, I was able to locate him, and begin writing a series of letters, to which he has not responded to.

The DA file was made known to me in 2024.

I decided to read it cover to cover.

It was as if I had lived all of my life in some dark cave, and then one day saw the pinhole of light from some other end, and stepped outside in a pure sunlight.

- Okay.

There we go.

Because there was so much that I had not understood about the lives of these refugees, about the perpetrator, about the legal system, about law enforcement, I realized that this was another opportunity to marry life and art in a way that I've become so familiar with.

- Vu came to us for a restorative justice process with the person that murdered his mother.

I offered him the solution of a surrogacy.

In a situation where a party doesn't wanna participate or is unable to participate and have a dialogue with the person they harmed, we bring in a surrogate who had similar harm happen, and then they come in and tell their story.

So the person that caused the harm can actually see the impact of what they've done.

From that, because Vu does video, we decided to work on a project.

- Cool.

All right, our first interview is here, so, I'm gonna just come and grab him.

My role here is to be the producer, director, and campaign strategist for a digital storytelling campaign.

And that campaign is centered around victim survivors' voices and their stories.

I couldn't think of a more personally meaningful way to use my skills than to do this and to help others out.

- [Camera Assistant] Scene Sam, take one, common marker.

- So tell us what you do remember to the point when you woke up again after you were shot, were you conscious for a little bit?

I mean, you were conscious enough to yell for help.

- People need to listen to those that have been harmed, and most often all of us that have been harmed are looking for a relational type repair.

- So talk to me as if I were in your shoes and I wanted retribution, I wanted punishment for him.

Explain to me like why I should forgive this person or even attempt to make contact with him.

(engines rumbling) (vocalist singing in Vietnamese) - In the process of doing all of this, my uncle connected me to my aunt in Vietnam, and my aunt, after a few months of beginning to get to know me through a series of weekly video chats, asked me if I could exhume my mother's remains, cremate it, and bring her ashes back to Vietnam, to be where her relatives and her ancestors were also buried.

(gentle music) (case clattering) (gentle music continues) I was able to return to Vietnam and shoot for about a week with Kevin Forrest, my DP.

(gentle music continues) As a narrative filmmaker, I've always asserted a level of control and design.

And with documentary filmmaking, there is a much more spontaneous and loose kind of approach to it.

With subjects as opposed to actors, you're setting the stage or the environment and provoking through questions.

And those questions are the sort of equivalent of directorial guiding that you do as a director.

(Vu speaking in Vietnamese) This is (beep) crazy, dude.

He was here with my mom, so the last time he saw me was here, and now the first time he's seen me since then is right here.

Weird (beep).

(interviewee speaking in Vietnamese) (interviewee speaking) (audio rewinding) - As I take on the role of an editor is also one in which I have sort of a new relationship to the subject of my films.

(person speaking in Vietnamese) - Some of the subject matter being my aunt and my cousin, you know, are people that I care personally about.

And now being able to sit down and look at their interviews and stare at their faces and look at their gestures, and capture every little, you know, glimmer of nuance is as if I am making up for 43 years of lost time through every frame of their image.

- Living in silence of things that happened is not healthy.

I believe stories change the world, and the world changes our stories.

So we need to tell them to change the world in a way we want to see it become.

(engine rumbling) - [Vu] I just want cinema to stir feeling, provoke thought, and then carry all that into the world in dialogue, in conversation, in self-examination and self-exploration.

(reflective music continues) That's a very satisfying result of a labor of love.

(reflective music continues) (reflective music continues)