The Betrayal (2008)

FAMILY TIES A son of Laotian immigrants learns his long-absent father is alive in documentary The Betrayal

In 1981, Thavisouk Phrasavath, his mother, and eight siblings — all survivors of the war in Laos — arrived in Brooklyn, where they'd been promised a home by U.S. officials. Ellen Kuras' documentary The Betrayal jumps between the '80s, when the family struggled to make a go of it (Phrasavath, who helped shoot this footage, is credited as codirector), and the present, when Phrasavath learns that his father, a CIA recruit and victim of Laotian ''reeducation'' camps, is still alive and has a family in Florida. The past-and-present layering is a lot more resonant — and less sketchy — than the film's theme of ''betrayal,'' both familial and governmental. B–