Name: Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2012-01-08
Rating: 8.5
Cast: Deborah Wallace, Maria Tran, Thang Ngo

Surprisingly hard-hitting for the ethnic broadcaster. A three part account of Sydney suburb Cabramatta, where waves of boat people arrived after the Vietnam War, as the new Labor Government dumped the White Australia Policy, only to find no support services or Vietnamese speaking social workers.

With the parents out working long hours, the kids were sucked into gangs and the place became "the heroin capital of Australia." Things climax with the assassination of local member John Newman, shown making speeches about "sending them back to the jungles of Vietnam" - the country's first political assassination. 

Harrowing case histories, Police Crime statistics rubbished, twenty detox beds for fifteen hundred addicts, families destroyed all lead to a not too convincing happy ending with Community Involvement - the Old Oz publican grabs every dealer, who offers him, and citizen's arrests him off to the cop station and the new member of parliament ("My whole campaign was completely L plated") arranges community meetings, which break the code of silence.

Attention holding. On screen commentary with interviews of addicts, cops, paramedics and families straight to camera, under-cranked footage and archive material, all effective.

The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

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How the Vietnamese community overcame the odds and found their place in multicultural Australia.

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Once Upon a Time in Cabramatta

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