Vietnamese International Film Festival

THE Vietnamese International Film Festival invites you to see the real O.C. Not the version in the now-defunct TV show about the lives of the young, rich and ultra-hip, but the slice of O.C. living that filmmaker Le-Van Kiet delivers in "Dust of Life," a gritty look at displaced Vietnamese teens in Westminster during the 1990s. "Dust of Life" makes its world premiere as the closing-night film during the third annual festival that begins tonight and ends April 22.

A feel-good sports movie about a ragtag rugby team in Australia, complete with heart-swelling music and montages of cheering crowds, opens the Vietnamese International Film Festival today in Irvine. But underlying the story of the team's triumphs in "Footy Legends" -- as in many of the festival's films -- is the main character's deep ties to his past in Vietnam and the war that tore his family apart.

A feel-good sports movie about a ragtag rugby team in Australia, complete with heart-swelling music and montages of cheering crowds, opens the Vietnamese International Film Festival today in Irvine. But underlying the story of the team's triumphs in "Footy Legends" -- as in many of the festival's films -- is the main character's deep ties to his past in Vietnam and the war that tore his family apart.

THE Vietnamese International Film Festival invites you to see the real O.C. Not the version in the now-defunct TV show about the lives of the young, rich and ultra-hip, but the slice of O.C. living that filmmaker Le-Van Kiet delivers in "Dust of Life," a gritty look at displaced Vietnamese teens in Westminster during the 1990s. "Dust of Life" makes its world premiere as the closing-night film during the third annual festival that begins tonight and ends April 22.

War trauma marks the hearts and minds of even those born after the war, especially if that war was Vietnam. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and many of the films in the Vietnamese International Film Festival that takes place this weekend and next are infused with a sense of wistfulness and of melancholy. They evoke an idyllic homeland, they mourn its loss, they commemorate a painful transition to a new home.

The second Vietnamese International Film Festival -- which runs tonight through Sunday and next Thursday through April 17 at various locations -- will present 37 features and shorts. Among them is Victor Vu's exquisite ghost story "Spirits," a compelling psychological mood piece that unfolds in three parts.

Orange County has many faces. Some are beautiful; some less so. Some are revealed; some stay hidden. Le-Van Kiet knows about hidden faces. He came of age in Little Saigon when urban myth defined much of his surroundings and masked the life he saw unfolding around him.

War trauma marks the hearts and minds of even those born after the war, especially if that war was Vietnam. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and many of the films in the Vietnamese International Film Festival that takes place this weekend and next are infused with a sense of wistfulness and of melancholy. They evoke an idyllic homeland, they mourn its loss, they commemorate a painful transition to a new home.