Irish Woman Helps Vietnamese Children in Inspirational True Story ‘Noble’

Sandra Miska

For those who love a good inspirational biopic, “Noble,” the story of children’s rights advocate Christina Noble (Deidre O’Kane), opens May 8.  The film will detail the life of Noble, from her Irish roots to her work in Vietnam.

The main events of “Noble” take place in 1989 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  14 years after the end of the war the country is in dire need of help.  Noble arrives to find hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children roaming the streets and squatting in abandoned buildings. After the authorities refuse to listen to her concerns and take action, Noble begins to look after some of the children herself.

After being threatened with deportation, Noble convinces the authorities to give her a work permit, but she has three months to find the means to make her proposed children’s charity a reality

Noble’s story in Vietnam is interwoven with flashbacks of her childhood in 1940’s Ireland.  Like the children she eventually helps, Noble grew up poor in the slums, one of six children of a sickly mother and an alcoholic father.  After her mother succumbs to her illness, Noble’s father loses custody and all six children are sent to separate institutions.  Noble is sent to one of those awful institutions run by nuns where young women are forced to spend their days in servitude (see “The Magdalene Sisters”).

After her eventual release from the nuns, Noble faces many more struggles, the worst being a brutal rape that leads to a pregnancy and her forced separation from her baby son.  A marriage to the abusive Mario (David Mumeni) and the birth of more children follow.  It is about this time in the late 1960s, at the height of the Vietnam War, that Noble has a series of vivid dreams about that country and the suffering of its children, and decides to take action.

“Noble” was written and directed by Deidre O’Kane’s husband, Stephen Bradley. Bradley, a native of Ireland, got his start working as a producer’s assistant on the classic Irish drama “My Left Foot.”

“Noble” opens May 8.