We first see Thuy being scolded by her uncle in his factory. She has cut sticks the wrong length. It may be a bit shocking for us to see a ten-year-old working, but for an orphan in Vietnam, this is what she faces. She's lucky her uncle has a place for her, and he doesn't let her forget that "I'm all you have."

Owl and the Sparrow is the story of Thuy after she runs away to Ho Chi Minh City, but what will await her there? She has no family, only a little money from her piggy bank, and nowhere to live. But she manages to bring together a family based not in blood, but in love.

Thuy serves as a catalyst to bring together the two friends she makes: Lan, a flight attendant who is having an affair with a married pilot, and Hai, a broken-hearted zookeeper. She meets each as she tries to get by selling flowers, and she manages to work her way into each one's heart.

Neither Lan nor Hai has found much happiness. Everyone tells Lan how beautiful she is, but she understands that she has no real love in her life. The affair with the pilot is a dead end. It only goes on by way of its momentum. Hai's fiancèe has broken off the engagement, and who can really blame her? He lives in a shack on the zoo grounds. What joy he has comes from the animals, but they have just sold the youngest elephant, which Hai raised, to another zoo. He spends more time talking to the elephant than he does to people.

Thuy is a natural matchmaker and manages to bring these two together. When the authorities pick her up and place her in an orphanage, Hai and Lan try to adopt her, but since they aren't related, she is to be sent back to her uncle. How can these three brokenhearted people find a way to create a family?

Owl and the Sparrow is a sweet story that has won some awards at film festivals: a Crystal Heart at Indianapolis's Heartland Film Festival (that focuses on "truly moving pictures"), an Audience Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Starz Denver International Film Festival for director Stephane Gauger, Best Feature Film at the Big Apple Film Festival, and several awards from various Asian film festivals across the U.S.

The story has a bit of fairy tale quality to it. The three people come together a little too easily, but that's the way fairy tales work when you find true love. Fairy tales also have troubles that must be defeated, and this nascent family faces its problems as well.

This is a film that values family, but also seeks to define what really makes a family. Thuy's uncle is her family, but only in name. To him, Thuy is a burden. He does come to the city to look for her, but we never get a feeling that he really cares for her as anything more than cheap labor. The family Thuy works to create is based on recognizing the value intrinsic in each person. While no one else sees these three as having worth in their own right, when they come together they find not only the worth of each other, but their own worth as well... a worth that is compounded by their finding one another.