Though America does provide a "Western" sense of liberty, the freedom of cultivating and preserving your family's heritage through the generations can be difficult. For example, while my parents still maintain all Vietnamese traditions and observances every year, I had never participated spiritually or in a communal manner until I was much older to understand. This doesn't necessarily mean that my father and mother were poor at parenting and instilling in me the meaning and significance of my culture. They were too busy working long hours all week trying to make enough money to raise me and to pay the rent in our one bedroom apartment. I was left with going to an American school and having the television as my babysitter.

In many ways, I connected to "Three Seasons" if not only for the ethnic relation, but because its depiction of Saigon is very similar to my upbringing. While I struggled between two worlds, my Vietnamese home life and my American education and friends, the Saigon of "Three Seasons" is struggling in transition and progress. Change is a scary thing, especially when the options are few and far between, and there is isn't a clean and clear direction to head to.

The characters each portray a different aspect of Vietnam as they try and cope with the obvious and unsubtle changes in their world. What was once thriving with local businesses and a community of people living in harmony with each other is traded for the neon lit banners of American soft drinks, stacked televisions in windows, and new flower businesses that sell manufactured lotuses that drive the local ones that spend all day picking in the fields out. Even the hundreds of cyclo riders that occupy the streets are slowly diminishing because of the efficiencies of the car.

The direction of the film is brilliant as Tony Bui leads the cast into emotional and beautiful states of humanity, ranging from a prostitute that yearns for a better life that reaches farther than she's ever known to a veteran who searches for his humanity in a woman that connects him to his past from the war. These vignettes are not only poignant and tender in displaying the span of emotional threshold, but potent in its imagery and music in representing a world that is nostalgic in its history and frightened for its future. No matter what happens to these characters, there is a sense of loneliness, trauma and ultimately redemption that will change them forever. The world as they know it will never be the same.

"Three Seasons" was the first in Sundance Film Festival history to ever pick up both the Grand Jury Award and Audience Award. Along with those two recognitions, Lisa Rinzler also accepted the Cinematography Award for her stunning and gorgeous photography of Saigon as well. Tony Bui went on the festival circuit all over the world and received numerous of other awards and honors and quickly became a favorite among the critics and film lovers everywhere.

I highly recommend this film simply for its touching and beautiful message and illustration of a country in transition. Tony Bui's directorial debut is nothing short of extraordinary in its historical importance and poetic vision. It is a film that has affected my personal life greatly and will be a film that I carry with me for the rest of my life.