BERLIN -- "Beautiful Country" is the latest rendition of the American immigrant story -- at least one seems to arrive with each film festival -- and this certainly is one of the more compelling examples of such tales. The film achieves its power through a careful gathering of crucial details, in wordless glances, cruelties of nature and of man and the relentless determination to gain the promised land, even if that land is incapable of living up to those promises. Producers Edward R. Pressman and Terrence Malick (who conceived the story) took a gamble in hiring a Norwegian, Hans Petter Moland, to direct the saga of a young Vietnamese man who embarks on an arduous journey from his homeland to Texas in search of his American father.

Subscribe to the Hollywood Reporter and see the entertainment industry from its best angle: the inside looking out. Complete access to real-time news and exclusive analysis that goes behind the scenes from film to television, home video to digital media.

   Subscribe now.