Twelve-year-old Di is reaching a generational cusp. Nearly able to pull away from the archaic marriage traditions of the rural Hmong people, she wants instead to continue her education—but it’s not easy. Both her mother and older sister were victims of bride kidnapping, a fate that likely awaits Di as well, and while her mother desires for her daughter to stay in school, her roots are still firmly tangled in Hmong tradition and she questions how to properly advocate for her daughter’s future. As Di enters adolescence, seemingly innocent acts such as flirting on Facebook or riding on a boy’s motorbike carry greater significance than she understands.

Maintaining for the most part a fly-on-the-wall approach, filmmaker Hà Lệ Diễm skillfully documents three years in the life of her friend Di’s family. Intimate, intense, and at times deeply troubling, Children of the Mist witnesses a young woman as she desperately tries to strike a balance between family and freedom. -lh

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