Regret to Inform Reviews

Filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn takes a deeply personal trip back to Vietnam in this brilliant, emotionally shattering documentary. Nearly 25 years after receiving the dreaded telegram informing her that her husband Jeff had been killed in the jungles of Que Sanh, North Vietnam, Sonneborn embarked on a journey that had been a long time coming. Since 1990, she had conducted interviews with fellow American widows who also lost their husbands to the unpopular war. Two years later, accompanied by a small camera crew and interpreter Xuan Ngoc Evans, a South Vietnamese war widow now living the U.S., Sonneborn boarded a plane bound for Vietnam, determined to see for the faraway place where her husband died — a place she'd only visited in nightmares. Footage of Sonnenfeld traveling by train through the verdant Vietnamese countryside is accompanied by her own eloquent reminiscences of her husband and feelings of anger over the war, as well as interviews with other widows whose testimonies are nothing short of heartbreaking. Significantly, Sonneborn also includes interviews with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong widows who experienced the horror of the "American War" at first hand. This is no mere home movie: Mrs. Sonneborn is an accomplished photographer and filmmaker who makes beautiful use of 30 year-old archival footage, often presented in haunting slow motion, and her film is lyrically edited for maximum emotional impact. The real beauty of film lies in the fact that it doesn't so much reopen old wounds as provide a forum for hitherto unheard voices. The result, one hopes, is something a balm for the people involved: It's certainly an eye-opening experience for the audience.