Abstract:

This semi-autobiography traces the maker's birth on a secret CIA military base in the hills of Laos to his anti-war college years during Persian Gulf War and the Tiananmen Square student movement. Mixing archival footage, family photographs, and dramatization -- Thoj looks at how his life had been controlled and his identity shaped by the war into which he was born -- and finally links his personal history to Hmong history under French colonialism and during the American wars in Laos.