This documentary was amazing! After being able to experience Vietnam on a trip in 2020, this was a wonderful reminder and rendition of how amazing the country and its people are. The shots of the country were beautiful and the whole production was awesome. I would highly recommend this film to anyone interested in learning more about Vietnam.

I came across this film by chance and I'm very glad I gave it a try. I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam war. I learned from other movies and reading about the incredible devastation Vietnam suffered in the war. So it was a great pleasure to watch a film on the resurgence of that formerly beleaguered nation. Their economy is now growing by leaps and bounds. And there seems among the people, especially the young, a sense of great optimism. It made me feel hopeful to see a country torn about by war only a few decades ago, now so vital and rejuvenated.

It's one of those marketing documentaries cities buy to advertise to tourists. Basically a feel-good "please visit Ho Chi Minh City" campaign. So it's what you expect: a lot of smiles, flashy statements, interviews that constantly focus on sale and image, focus on food and clean environment, and constant positivity with no focus on anything negative.

Largely the doc focuses on Vietnamese food. So he visits a bar, several restaurants/food wagons, 3 different farms, a tea store, fish boat. There is a lot of focus on how clean, cheap and good Vietnamese food is. We see all the farmers constantly mention how they are ecological and passionate about their product. Of course this cannot be the norm for all farmers. Some will be tired and want an easier job or just complain a lot about the communist rules. Not here, they are busy telling the interviewer it's their dream to be modern farmers and we never really meet any gritty or oldschool farmer or business owner. There is not a single person complaining about the country, city, the people or conditions. Which again is a tiny bit fishy unless we are in a cartoon world or they would be imprisoned if they criticize the system.

The doc focuses so much on marketing that it even starts out interviewing a typical Californian who moved to Vietnam to work in tourist marketing. Every single word out of his mouth is all flashy hollow statements and he uses the words "marketing/progress" in every third sentence. Basically the typical Western marketing guru. He praises Ho Chi Minh's his life story basically selling the idea of the communist utopian state. And over half the people interviewed in this documentary are the same type of Western focused marketing gurus. Even some of the farmers and the cook he interviews are speaking in vague sales terms while making it all overly dramatic and focused on the Western market. 2 of the tech guru women he interviews are feminists with focus on women centric business progress whatever that implies. Again flashy jobs and titles with very little practical info about what these people actually do. 3 of the main people in the doc are just marketing people with extremely vague job descriptions. It all sounds overly American and several of the people also talk about how they were very eager to learn English and become salesmen. He just picks these people for interviews, only few of them don't speak English. They say that tourism has boomed in the capital and that they are trying to get ahead in the world. Ho Chi Minh city is basically presented as a copy of the super progressive San Francisco with similar people, restaurants and ideas. And while capitals do tend to be progressive I'm not sure most of Vietnam is full of top-dog flashy businesses gurus speaking English and looking extremely charismatic on camera as they flash their company logos to the interviewer.

It's not a bad doc at all. It just feels like some weird image of Vietnam. They mention USA and the Vietnam war too. The interviewer of course invites these topics, but he should have been focused on asking people about themselves instead of letting them talk about him and USA.