The Adoptees

Two worlds. Two lives.

March 1975 — South Vietnam teeters on the edge of collapse. Refugees are pouring into Saigon. Among the millions are thousands of orphaned children.

As North Vietnamese forces advance, President Ford issues an executive order: all orphaned children waiting for adoption are cleared for immediate evacuation.

Over the next four weeks, over 3,300 orphans were evacuated from the country by the American military and Pan Am Airlines in what became known as Operation Babylift.

For many Americans, this is where the story ended. For the orphans, theirs had just begun.

Background

Our Film

The Adoptees is a feature documentary tracing the intertwined lives of two Vietnamese adoptees, Mike and David, who were evacuated during Operation Babylift in 1975 and adopted by families on the same street in Missouri.

While Mike embraced assimilation and the promise of the American Dream, David struggled to let go of their past. Their paths ultimately diverged—until David’s unexpected death prompted Mike to reconnect and rexamine their shared history.

Co-directed by Mike himself, The Adoptees depicts an untold chapter in American history and offers a powerful reflection on what it means to lose—and to reclaim—one’s past, one’s family, and one’s sense of belonging.