We Were the Scenery - Comments & Tips

In the short documentary “We Were the Scenery,” two former Vietnamese refugees talk about their time as extras on the set of “Apocalypse Now.” They provide an interesting perspective on the film and the treatment of displaced Vietnamese at the time, and all of this is backed up by original footage. Overall, I felt that the film lacked a common thread or a kind of narrative arc, but it is definitely worth watching for the very special glimpse behind the scenes of Hollywood it offers.

[VdR '25] The narrative of poet Cathy Linh Che's parents is sometimes humorous and offers a certain nostalgia for the weeks they spent playing other characters, but based on their own lived experiences. In this way, the unusual testimony from the perspective of Vietnamese people who worked as extras in an American production ends up being a profound reflection on memory and the power of representation in cinema, even if this means returning the victims to a war zone to reproduce it in fiction. This form of oral and audiovisual narration succeeds in restoring historically erased perspectives.