Ann Hui became known in the U.S. with her 1983 feature Boat People, but in Hong Kong, and at film festivals from Asia to Edinburgh, she was already being celebrated as an innovative visual stylist and an explosive storyteller-the epitome of Hong Kong's new wave of filmmakers-based on three thrillers: The Secret (1980), The Spooky Bunch (see September 23), and The Story of Wu Viet. As early as 1978, Hui had made a first "boat person" film for television, entitled Boy from Vietnam, which followed the plight of a lonely teenage refugee. Wu Viet draws on her research for that film in telling of a young Vietnamese refugee who leaves a camp in Hong Kong to go to America, only to be trapped midway in the Philippines. Hui borrows the framework of an American B film noir-at once bleak, melodramatic, and adventurous-to couch the tale of Wu Viet's journey, from rural roots to the ultra-materialistic universe of Manila's underworld, in which he becomes insidiously enmeshed.