We Were the Scenery 2025

Filmed on location in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Long Beach, We Were the Scenery is a short documentary based on the experiences of writer Cathy Linh Che’s parents, two Vietnam War refugees who while in a refugee camp in the Philippines, were utilized as background extras in Apocalypse Now.

15 min
Vietnamese
nonfiction

Director/Editor: Christopher Radcliff
Writer/Producer: Cathy Linh Che
Cinematographer/Producer: Jess X. Snow
Executive Producers: Su Kim, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Kelly Marie Tran, Grace Lay,
Sevasti Buford, Akemi Look, David Moon Ki Lee, Alicia Fujun Lew, Jungyoon Kim, Andreas Nicholas, Anthony Dinh Tran, Mingran Yamira Yang, Linhao Zhang
Sound Designer/ Re-Recording Mixer: Haina Zhou
Assistant Editor/ Post Supervisor: Andrew Migliori
Original Score: Eliot Leigh
Sound Mixer: Quyên Nguyễn-Lê
Additional Sound Designer: Mackie Mallison
Colorist: Stephanie Park

Available to view on:

Criterion Channel
Vimeo Staff Picks
Short of the Week
Le Cinema Club

www.wewerethesceneryfilm.com

98th Academy Awards, Shortlist

Sundance 2025, Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction

Vimeo Staff Pick Best of the Year, 2025

Letterboxd - Top Ten Highest Rated Short Films, 2025

Nominee, Cinema Eye Honors, 2026

Short List, DOC NYC, 2025

Special Jury Prize for Documentary Short, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, 2025

Best International Short Documentary Film, Galway Film Fleadh, 2025

Best International Short Dox, DokuFest, 2025

Excellence in Short Filmmaking Award, Audience Award, Asian American IFF, 2025

Grand Jury Special Mention, International Section, Kaohsiung Film Festival, 2025

Air Canada Best Short Film Award, ReelAsian Film Festival, 2025

Best Short Documentary, San Diego Asian Film Festival, 2025

Special Mention, SIMA Awards, 2026

Best Documentary, Psarokokalo International Short Film Festival 2026

Best Documentary, HAAPIFest 2026

“Poignant, funny, sad, and optimistic. Should be required viewing anytime Apocalypse Now is screened”
– Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Hypnotic. Few films encapsulate the pregnant possibility of short-form storytelling better than We Were the Scenery”
– Jason Sondhi, Short of the Week

“A rare, sensitive diasporic mediation”
– Aaron E. Hunt, Criterion Collection - Current

“A reminder that the peripheries of a film frame may contain life stories
that are richer and greater than whatever may occupy the centre”
– Jason Anderson, Talking Shorts

“Proof that brevity poses no limit to cinematic potency”
– Inney Prakash, Film Comment

“One of the best documentaries of the year”
– Beau Farrell, Vimeo Staff Picks

“Incredibly beautiful and funny. Christopher Radcliff does an amazing job”
– John Ridley, Deadline

“A wholly unique, witty, joyful perspective on art-making, the impact of film, and how they intersect with real lives”
– Sundance Film Festival Jury

“A tour de force… a nuanced documentary that offers a new take on both the refugee story and a classic film”
– Hansen Bursic, cinéSPEAK

“A powerful act of reclamation that reframes war history through the intimate, overlooked voices of Vietnamese refugees”
– Galway Film Fleadh Short Film Jury for International Documentary

"A film that that revisits history through a deeply personal lens, with a gentle sense of humour, irony,
and an uncompromising decolonial gaze"
– DokuFest International Short Documentary Film Jury

“A deeply sensorial, profound film”
– Champs Elysées Film Festival

"A deeply moving and intelligent gaze that looks at film itself as a medium of distancing.
With a warm, loose conversational tone, it conveys the distance between lived experience and
a Hollywood narrative of war—offering a Vietnamese gaze on Hollywood, reversed,
all encased in a deeper speculation on film and memory."
— Esy Casey, Psarokokalo ISFF Jury

"For its remarkable perspective, its powerful way of narrating migration, violence, and neocolonialism
through the lens of cinema, and for proposing new documentary narratives."
— Néstor López Ferreira, Psarokokalo ISFF Jury

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