A Father's War Memoir Becomes a Family Film: 'Ba's Book' Heads to Toronto
A daughter rebuilds her father's childhood home in Vietnam — three walls, no fourth — and asks him to sit inside it and read aloud from the book he wrote about surviving the Vietnam War and revolutionary Iran. That film, Ashley Duong's hybrid documentary Ba's Book, will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 15, screening at 9:30 AM as part of the TIFF Docs programme (The Hollywood Reporter; TIFF).
The festival runs September 10 to 20. Ba's Book is a Canadian production, programmed by TIFF Docs curator Thom Powers (TIFF).
Anh Duong — known to his family as Ba — is a Montreal-based father who lived through the Vietnam War and was stranded as a refugee in 1970s Iran during the revolution. He taught himself to draw, a skill that eventually earned him entry into Canada. He turned that story into a memoir, Dear Da-Le: A Father's Memoir of the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution, published in 2024 (The Hollywood Reporter).
His daughter Ashley, originally from Calgary and now based in Montreal, adapted the memoir into a feature film. She co-wrote the screenplay with Steven Sych and produced alongside Ina Fichman. Her earlier credits include the short films A Time to Swim (2017) and Space Explorers: Moonrise on the ISS (2023) (TIFF; ashleyduong.com).
The film moves fluidly between staged re-enactments and vérité documentary — a hybrid approach that puts real family members in Vietnam alongside actors on the reconstructed set of the Duong family home. The set was built with only three walls, stage-style, so the camera could look in (The Hollywood Reporter).
In a clip released ahead of the premiere, Anh Duong sits inside the set with Duy Nguyen, the actor who plays his younger self in the recreations. He reads from his memoir in Vietnamese so his siblings — who do not speak English — can hear his words in their language (The Hollywood Reporter).
Ba's Book already carries festival recognition. In May 2026, it received the Documentary Magazine Award at the Docs-In-Progress Canada Showcase during Cannes Docs (RIDM; ashleyduong.com).
What makes the film unusual is the machinery behind it: a memoir written by a father, a screenplay shaped by his daughter, a replica of a house that no longer stands, and a cast that includes the family who lived in it. The recreation is not a backdrop. It is the stage where a family hears a story some of them had never been able to read.
