Meet Oanh-Nhi Nguyen | Film Director, Writer and Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Oanh-Nhi Nguyen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Oanh-Nhi, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
My high school had a documentary program when I was young so I started filmmaking when I was around 15-16 years old. The documentaries I’d make as a teenager were always socially conscious. In college, I co-edited a documentary with a professor on sexual violence survivors around the world who would use art to share their stories.

After college, I didn’t think filmmaking was a possible avenue for me so I took a ten year break from film. I worked in the movement to end violence against women and girls for a few years, then digital organizing for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and eventually worked in philanthropy where I helped start funds totaling $11 million to resource US-based grassroots organizations supporting girls of color and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

During the pandemic, I started my own consulting business and was screenwriting (a hobby I had on/off for 10 years). I realized that I wanted to pursue film again. I had never seen anyone direct before or been on a set but felt like my lived experiences would allow me to excel as a director so I decided to take the leap and follow my intuition. I made a short film and started a documentary on Southeast Asians resettlement stories with my friends at VietLead, a social justice organization in Philadelphia.

I applied to film school and I’m now a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute (AFI).

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Inheriting my identity has led me to live a life of dichotomies. I’m Vietnamese but was born in France, a country that colonized Vietnam for decades. When I was six, my family moved to the US, a country that permanently altered my people’s future and where my parents sacrificed their dreams to cultivate my own. When I was 16, I wanted to make a documentary about my parents’ experiences during the war. After some hesitation, my parents eventually agreed and shared their stories with me, and I saw sides of them I had never seen before. My stoic father was vulnerable on camera, while my fearful mother spoke her truth. It was then that I recognized the power of storytelling and its ability to heal.

Growing up as a Vietnamese-French-American and child of immigrants has shaped my aspirations as a filmmaker. I’m a director and writer who centers the lived experiences of women and girls of color and I aspire to create spaces to uplift their truths and dreams.

For the past 9 years, I’ve worked in social justice and philanthropy where I mobilized Asian Americans online against the Trump administration and moved meaningful resources to nonprofits advocating for girls of color and AAPI communities. These experiences were guided by my yearning to live in an America where self-determination, love, and care were at the core of systems, rather than exploitation, violence, and dehumanization. I realized, however, that I needed to not just react to archaic and broken systems. I needed to build and imagine new ways of being too. This realization reignited my past dreams of becoming a filmmaker.

It led me to executive produce and direct an upcoming documentary with VietLead, a youth-led Vietnamese nonprofit in Philadelphia. The documentary honors Southeast Asian resettlement stories and the impact of anti-Black policies and gentrification on communities of color in Philadelphia.

I’m also currently a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute (AFI), where in 4 weeks I wrote and directed a dramedy short film based on a serious young Vietnamese woman and her elder quirky Vietnamese neighbor. I direct and write stories focused on how intergenerational trauma and healing impact the trajectory of their lives.

To me filmmaking is a powerful vehicle to imagine new realities where we can consciously transform our lives and communities and I aspire to make films through a lens of hope and healing.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
VietLead https://www.vietlead.org/
https://www.instagram.com/vietlead/?hl=en

Website: www.oanhnhinguyen.com

Instagram: oanh-nhi.nguyen