INDOCHINA: TRACES OF A MOTHER documents a little-known chapter in African, Asian and French colonial history and the personal story of Christophe, a Beninese-Vietnamese orphan that returns to Vietnam to look for his long-lost mother.

Between 1946 and 1954, more than 60,000 African soldiers were enlisted by France to fight the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War. Pitted against one another by circumstances, African and Vietnamese fighters came into contact, and a number of African soldiers married Vietnamese women. Out of these unions, numerous mixed-race children were born.

At the end of the war, the French colonial army gave orders to bring all Afro-Vietnamese children to Africa. While some children left with their mothers and fathers, others were simply taken away by their fathers, leaving their mothers behind. Children that had neither mother nor father were abandoned in orphanages and put up for mass adoption by African officers.