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The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)

Critics' Pick

(No longer in theaters)

Rating: No Rating
Director: Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Phrasavath
Running Time: 96 minutes
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Rate & Review

Genre

Documentary

Producer

Flora Fernandez-Marengo

Distributor

The Cinema Guild

Release Date

Nov 21, 2008

Release Notes

Review

The gifted cinematographer Ellen Kuras spent decades tracking the Phrasavaths, a large Laotian family that fled the devastated country after the secret U.S. war, after the father was imprisoned for advising Americans on where to drop thousands of bombs. The Betrayal moves among time periods and countries, from the Laotian countryside to the alien dangerous tenements of Brooklyn. The damage to the family seems too deep to heal, yet the film is lyrical, expansive, unbearably beautiful, with a melting violin score by Howard Shore. The bitterness has an epic scaleï¿½bottomless, borderless, universal. — David Edelstein