How Kim Thúy was transported back to her childhood during the filming of Ru

Q32:41How Kim Thúy was transported to her childhood for the filming of Ru

At the end of the Vietnam War, during the fall of Saigon, Kim Thúy and her family were forced to flee their affluent and comfortable home. They ended up in a crowded refugee camp in Malaysia, later settling in Quebec, where they had to learn a new language, adapt to a new climate and culture, and build a new life.

In 2009, Thúy published her autobiographical debut novel, Ru, which won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction in 2010 and Canada Reads in 2015, among several other honours. Now, after a decade of development, Ru has been adapted into a film that's already made nearly $1.8 million at the box office in Quebec.

Though the film is quite personal, Thúy has a sense of humour about seeing her life story play out on the big screen. "To have someone who is interested in your story? I'm a nobody," she tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "Why would anyone want to put my story into a movie?"

On a more serious note, Thúy says she felt a responsibility to share her experience as an immigrant to Canada.

"I think it's very difficult to get attached to a big word like 'caravan' of migrants or a 'sea' of people coming in. You need to be attached. Our brain, our human brain, needs to have a face, a story. So if I could be a face, a story to talk about immigration, to talk about the situation of refugees, then I should say yes. I should always say yes. I have the responsibility to say yes."

Space to feel

During the making of the film, Thúy says she had a visceral reaction to what she saw on set. "How many people have the chance to go back in time and live the emotions that you didn't have the opportunity to live?" she asks.

Ru doesn't impose an emotion on its audience, dictating whether they should feel sad, happy or contemplative. Rather, as Thúy puts it, the film simply gives "space to feel." As a child living through a war, she didn't have time to think about her emotions as they cropped up.

Luck doesn't come, with a bow every time. Luck very often is hidden behind a challenge.- Kim Thúy

"At 10, you cannot identify your emotions," the author explains. "Basically, you lose a lot of language and emotions and sensations, feelings and all of that. You cannot verbalize the emotions. So for this movie to be very authentic to what that little girl [experienced] when she was 10, I couldn't name the emotion, I cannot give it to the audience. I can only show what we were going through."

WATCH | Official trailer for Ru:

According to a psychiatrist Thúy spoke to, people who've lived through extreme or traumatic experiences will sometimes shut down their emotions as a method of survival.

"The body is so intelligent — you know, the brain — it helps you to survive," she says. "This movie … forces you to go back, but it's incredible to have this experience and to finally be able to pinpoint the emotions that I had lived."

For four months in the refugee camp, Thúy and her family slept on the ground next to a pit used as an open-air toilet for the thousands of refugees who lived there. She says she feels lucky to have spent time in that refugee camp because it reset her expectations, stopped her from comparing and made her feel grateful for simple luxuries, like a mattress, when she finally arrived in Canada.

Today, Thúy considers herself "the luckiest girl on earth."

"Luck doesn't come, with a bow every time," she tells Power. "Luck very often is hidden behind a challenge. It's only when you take on the challenge that you will discover the luck behind."

The full interview with Kim Thúy is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Kim Thúy produced by Cora Nijhawan.