In the summer of 2021, the US military withdrew from Afghanistan after two long decades of war. The Fall of Kabul on August 15 struck a chord among many Vietnamese refugees in the United States, who had witnessed and experienced an eerily familiar sequence of events some forty-six years earlier. Directed by Thanh Tan, a daughter of refugees from Vietnam, and originally presented by KCTS 9 (Seattle’s PBS member station), this compelling Crosscut Origins miniature docuseries highlights the parallels of and intersections between Vietnamese and Afghan refugees in the aftermaths of the wars in their respective countries.

Through interview accounts of those who had experienced these displacement events and historical footage, the film traces the similarities between the Fall of Saigon and the Fall of Kabul and the influxes of Vietnamese and Afghan refugees to the United States nearly five decades apart. These groups’ shared fates as former American allies, as those who have lost their countries, and as newcomers to American society raise poignant questions about the lessons learned and not yet learned from history, about the United States’ responsibilities towards its allies, and about the challenges of refugee resettlement processes in the U.S. Tan’s background as a former journalist and the child of refugees unmistakably colors her presentation of the material, which balances a style akin to feature news reporting and personalizing the anecdotes shared by Afghan and Vietnamese refugees alike.  – Quan Tran