When documentary filmmaker Ashley Duong found out that her father had written a memoir, she was shocked. Her dad, Anh Duong, is a quiet person—an engineer, not a writer. The contents of the book, Dear Da-Lê, held even more surprises. It was written as a series of letters to Ashley, containing stories from Anh’s youth during the Vietnam War and the time he spent living in Iran—stories that Ashley had never heard before. 

In her hybrid documentary Ba’s Book, her most personal project to date, Ashley stages recreations of her father’s memoir, with her family members in Vietnam as the cast and crew. From the beginning, Ashley knew she didn’t want to make a pure adaptation of her father’s story. Instead, Ba’s Book lets the viewer in on the making of the film, shifting between the staged recreations and documentary footage of Ashley and her family on set—including all the challenges that can come while working with loved ones. 

“I had a lot of concerns going in. I wasn’t sure if we could collaborate together artistically, me and my dad,” Ashley says. “Did I have all the skills necessary to take on this really important story for my family? Will this be upsetting for people to have to revisit difficult years during the war?”

Initially, Ashley filmed interviews with her aunts, uncles, and grandmother in Vietnam, but soon realized that her family didn’t really want to talk about the war. So, she did an experiment—she cast her cousins as younger versions of her aunts and uncles, and started filming a scene based on her father’s manuscript. 

“Suddenly my grandmother, who said, ‘Oh, I can’t remember those years,’ she’d run out and she’d be like, ‘No, that’s not right. Make sure they take off the shoes because back then the kids didn’t wear shoes.’ She just started directing people, and I was like…maybe this is the right way for them to be able to tell [the story].” 

Ashley’s father was on board with her film, but initially, he didn’t want to return to Vietnam. She was planning to shoot most of the film in Da-Lê, the village where her father was raised. “I think it’s a difficult place for him to return to,” she says. She had already started development on the film in Vietnam, but she couldn’t envision the project without him there—so finally, he joined her.  

Even with her father on board, Ashley still had challenges ahead of her—including one that threatened to upend the entire film. “We were two weeks away from shooting, and we didn’t even have formal permission,” Ashley says. She had to get a permit to film in Vietnam and undergo an intense script review process. Even after receiving permission, the film includes scenes where Ashley and her team are told to put their cameras away. “We eventually got it, but it was very nerve-wracking because it all depended on that. I can’t film it somewhere else. My relatives are there. The village is there. That is the place that I need to film.”

Ashley’s connection to the village runs deep—her legal first name is Da-Lê. When she travelled there alone for the first time in 2017, she struggled with the language barrier at first. But when she went to the market, everyone immediately knew who she was. “Everybody knew who I was right away…they could recognize my aunt in me and be like, oh, are you this person?” 

Filming Ba’s Book allowed Ashley to spend months in Vietnam and establish deeper connections with her family members who live there. The film is not just Anh’s story—it’s also about complex family dynamics—especially the relationship between father and daughter. Part of the film, Ashley tells us, was about accepting that she and her father don’t process things in the same way. 

“During the Vietnam War when communities were really distrustful of each other, you could see why somebody could become closed off,” she says. “I learned a lot about him and his family.”

When she set out to make this film, Ashley tells us she had a strong, almost primal, desire to bring her family together. Not only to talk about the past, but to be able to come together in the aftermath of a traumatic event—something she thinks that many families around the world can relate to. “50 years after the Vietnam War, it doesn’t matter if you were on different sides of the conflict. How do we come together after that?”

In a poignant scene at the end of the film, Ashley acknowledges that maybe this newfound connection forged through creativity, through turning painful experiences into art, is how she and her father show up for each other. Since making the film, Ashley tells us, she’s able to have creative discussions with her dad…even if they’re indirect. 

“A few weeks ago, we watched Blue Heron, and he was talking to me about what he thought of it and how it moved him and some things about the family—but then you know he’s also talking about our family,” Ashley says. “We’re able to have these not direct, sideways kind of conversations, which is a lot of what the film is about…he’s not going to necessarily always answer my question directly, but it will come out through this other way.”

Raised in Calgary and now based in Montreal, Ashley pursued Environmental Studies at McGill University—her first foray into the film industry was filming in national parks through Parks Canada. Her directorial debut, A Time to Swim, follows an Indigenous leader in Malaysia, while another recent project, Space Explorers: Moonrise on the ISS, was the largest production ever filmed in space. But Ba’s Book was her first deeply personal project—also her first time filming in Vietnam, her first time being on camera, and her first time with a 30-person crew. 

“Ba’s Book was extremely creatively fulfilling. “It was very complex, but it also pushed me in so many different ways,” Ashley says. “Like my dad, I don’t really express vulnerability very easily. To be able to open up, even a little bit, is very difficult for me. I liked the creative and personal challenge of what this film was.”

Now, Ashley is preparing for the world premiere of Ba’s Book at TIFF— the first time her dad will see the finished film in front of an audience. “It’s a dream come true,” Ashley says. Her dad has been there throughout the filmmaking process, so it only makes sense that he will be in Toronto alongside Ashley for the world premiere of Ba’s Book, as audiences from around the world take in this vulnerable and moving family saga. 

Ba’s Book will premiere at TIFF on September 15, and will also screen on September 17 and 19.