Four ordinary people living as strangers in their own land; a young girl hired to aid a reclusive spiritual master; a cyclo driver who becomes obsessed with a proud and ambitious prostitute; a very young boy hustling lighters, gum, and cheap watches in the streets; and an American Vietnam vet searching for the daughter he never knew. Disparate lives struggling to find both place and meaning in a nation that won the war but may be losing a piece of its soul.

With sweeping directorial vision and a powerfully poetic narrative, Tony Bui’s enormously impressive feature debut weaves together multiple stories into a striking pictorial tapestry of the “new” Vietnam, a contrast of the traditional to the modern, set within a nation in the chaotic throes of transition. As the first American film to be shot in Vietnam since the war, with a remarkable Vietnamese cast and emotionally provocative acting by the stalwart Harvey Keitel, Three Seasons achieved a pinnacle of excellence in filmmaking that was just as rare in its time as it is today.