Buffalo Boy (Mua Len Trau)

The southernmost region of Vietnam is the real “water world” of monsoons, houses on stilts surrounded by a seasonal lake, and rice planting in furrows plowed by precious water buffalos. During the six months of flooding, water buffaloes must be moved to higher ground for grazing, a job delegated in one poor family to the 15-year-old son Kim.

Along the trail he falls in with other buffalo herdsmen, many older than he, and certainly more dangerous and brutal. At this point the film becomes a kind of eastern western with herds of animals being moved (not to slaughter but to high foraging ground) by a gang of men who could just as well have been western gunslingers with loose morals. This is a dangerous situation for the impressionable young Kim, who still has a father he must return to. When he does come back, he is a changed young man who no longer wants to stay down on the family farm, thus precipitating a struggle with his father.

-- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society