The MOTHERLOAD

Conflict among the mother-daughter duo arises when Jessca embarks on a quest to find a home that once belonged to her mother’s family during pre-war Vietnam. Kim (Jessca’s mother), happy in her new but precarious position in America, fights to stay stateside. As their desires cause them to grow apart they are faced with old myths about the motherland, depicted in a public-broadcasting television show. With a cast consisting only of two Vietnamese-American women re-enacting and satirizing scenes from celebrated Vietnam War films while depicting a diasporic reality, this movie takes a closer look at what has been lost in war, what we find in the rubble, and how to hold on to what remains.

Directed by Van Tran Nguyen and Alex Derwick
Produced by Paula Fox Derwick

Directors’ Bios: Gladthing Productions is a collaboration between Alex Derwick and Van Tran Nguyen. The partner duo takes great pride in their scrappy and humble beginnings having met in graduate school in 2013. They mix their formal fine art training with cinematic influences born from being weird little latchkey kids.