POW Fest opens with Coming Up Easy, local director Rebecca Rodriguez’s drama of a possibly deadly struggle between sisters. It continues with a dual screening of Irene Taylor Brodsky’s The Final Inch (see interview on page TK) and the film that beat it for the Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar, Smile Pinki. But the unsung gem of the festival is The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), another Oscar nominee that took longtime cinematographer Ellen Curras 23 years to make alongside co-director (and subject) Thavisouk Phrasavath.
It’s impressive enough for a documentary to cover a quarter-century of relational turmoil, but The Betrayal contains footage from most of the actual years being chronicled. Phrasavath’s family (mom and nine siblings) may have escaped war-torn Laos for New Jersey, but the reverberations of the United States’ abandonment of them continue to ripple through their lives. The movie ebbs in poetic rhythms as well, with a shot of a swimming turtle providing more catharsis than turtles customarily offer. And then there’s a painful compromise involving a family member presumed dead—his return changes the title from a political protest to a treachery of the most ironic and personal kind. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. Coming Up Easy screens at 7 pm Thursday, March 19. The Final Inch and Smile Pinki screen at 7 pm Friday, March 20. The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) screens at 7 pm Saturday, March 21.

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