NEW: 'My Father's Vietnam" to Premiere at RI Film Fest

NEW: 'My Father's Vietnam" to Premiere at RI Film Fest

My Father's Vietnam, a documentary film by Providence filmmaker Soren Sorensen will make its world premiere at the 19th annual FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival. The screening will take place on August 6 at 2:45 p.m. at URI's Paff Theatre on 80 Washington Street in Downtown Providence. Tickets for the screening are $10.00.

My Father's Vietnam

Sorensen got the idea for the movie from his father, Peter, who enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1968, a year where American troop levels were growing but support for the War was shrinking.

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“For my generation, sons and daughters of the ‘baby boomers,’ enlisting in the military has always been a choice. So, 40 years later, the idea of enlisting during the Vietnam War, in a divisive political climate not unlike what we’re seeing now, seemed to me sort of inconsistent with common sense," said Soren Sorensen.

The film will feature the stories of two men Peter Sorensen served with who were killed in Vietnam in 1970. The production process included shoots in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and Washington DC.

Sorensen said that traveling all over helped him to know his father better.

“I came to realize that guys like my father didn’t really have a choice,” he said. “The romantic hindsight fantasy of burning your draft card and going to Canada had consequences related to your family, community, and financial situation that made it all but impossible," Sorensen said.

In the film, the audience will see never before seen photographs and 8mm footage of the era.

“The film is more than the story of a father and a son. It's emblematic of the deleterious and ripple effect armed conflicts such as the Vietnam War have on entire families and ultimately the nation," Peter Sorensen said.

The film was shot o over multiple years and Sorensen produced, wrote and edited it himself along with Dan Akiba, the director of photography.

Soren Sorensen

Soren Sorensen is a filmmaker who specializes in documentary film, television, and web content with an emphasis on branded content, arts and culture, as well as oral history.

Sorensen is a member of the adjunct faculty in Film Studies at Rhode Island College and Screen Studies at Clark University. Sorensen currently teaches directing, sound recording, and sound design at New York Film Academy's summer program at Harvard University.