Rialtoview | Heaven & Earth

2h 21m • Docudrama, Tragedy, War • 1993

A Vietnamese woman’s peaceful village life is shattered by war, sending her on a journey of survival from rice fields to America.

In Oliver Stone’s HEAVEN & EARTH, Le Ly grows up in a Vietnamese village shaped by tradition, family and ancestral land. But when war arrives, the world she knows is violently destroyed. Her journey takes her from the rice fields of the Central Highlands to a new life in California, carrying with her the trauma, resilience and memory of a country torn apart.

Rialto Recommends HEAVEN & EARTH is Oliver Stone’s most intimate Vietnam film, told through the life of a woman caught inside history rather than watching it from a distance. Expansive, emotional and deeply human, it shifts the war story from battlefield to memory, survival and exile. A powerful portrait of one woman’s endurance as her world is remade by violence, loss and hope.