A Necessary Journey

Vietnam 2009
90 min / color video

Executive Producer: Tami Bradshaw
Director/Co-Producer: Alfonse Ruggerio
Still Photographer/Co-Producer: Karen Schuler
Cinematographers: Seth Kotok, Adam Litwinski
Camera Operator: Scott Harris
Key Grip: Thang Nguyen
Picture Editor: Rochelle Watson
Sound Editor/Music: Jim Watson
Main Cast: Binh Rybacki, 2008 COPI Medical Team

During the fall of Saigon in 1975, Binh Rybacki, then eighteen, fled from Vietnam to Colorado. After a life-changing experience, Rybacki founded the Children of Peach International (COPI), a humanitarian organization dedicated to serving the people in Vietnam. A Necessary Journey follows Rybacki and COPI’s medical team as they venture on a seventeen-day journey from the picturesque but poverty-stricken mountains of northern Vietnam, to the busy streets of Hanoi, to the Imperial City of Hue, and finally to the economic center of Vietnam, metropolitan Saigon. As Rybacki and COPI carry out their mission of setting up health clinics and other humanitarian feats in Vietnam, they must resolve and endure various bureaucratic obstacles.
“A Necessary Journey” not only documents the humanitarian efforts of Rybacki and COPI, but also the transforming hearts of Rybacki, the COPI team, and the Vietnamese people as they learn to unburden themselves from the pain and loss of the past through the vision of creating a better tomorrow.

By Jessica Do