The Sounds of Cannons Familiar Like Sad Refrains

Directed by

Tuan Andrew Nguyen

The bombing of several regions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during the Vietnam War (1955 to 1975) by the United States Armed Forces—what is considered the largest aerial bombardment in human history—left hundreds of thousands of unexploded ordnances hidden underground, that still pose a tremendous threat to local inhabitants today. In this film, Tuan Andrew Nguyen juxtaposes archival footage from the US army with recently recorded images of an unexploded ordnance (UXO) deactivation in the Vietnamese coastal province of Quảng Trị. The province is one of the main UXO hotspots in the Mekong region, with 8,540 casualties and 3,431 deaths recorded since the end of the Vietnam War. More widely, it is estimated that UXO explosions have caused 40,000 deaths in Vietnam; 29,000 in Laos, of which 40% are believed to be children; and more than 64,000 in Cambodia since the end of the war.