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Talkhouse

Sundance award-winning director Timothy Linh Bui&#8216;s latest film, the vampire thriller Daydreamers, will be in theaters on May 9 and available on all major digital platforms June 3. Before Vietnam became a prominent tourist destination, Timothy, alongside his brother Tony, produced Three Seasons, a film that garnered multiple awards at Sundance and is often credited with inspiring a new wave of Vietnamese filmmakers. Bui later made his directorial debut with Green Dragon, which earned him the Humanitas Prize. He has worked with notable actors, including Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker, Eddie Redmayne, Patrick Swayze, Ray Liotta, Jessica Biel, and James Caan. Returning to Vietnam, Bui founded Happy Canvas, with the aim of producing films with global appeal. One of its key projects, The Housemaid, was released by IFC Films in North America and sold to over 25 countries.

Timothy Linh Bui

Film

Choosing To Be Seen: A Journey Beyond the Shadows

John Ridley is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director, novelist, playwright, and showrunner whose credits include 12 Years A Slave, Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992, American Crime, and Jimi: All is By My Side. His recent projects include Five Days at Memorial, a limited series for Apple TV+ chronicling the first five days in a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina; the New Group’s Off-Broadway stage musical Black No More, which opened in February 2022; and DC Power: A Celebration, which aims to amplify Black voices across the DC Universe. In September, Ridley released DC’s GCPD: The Blue Wall – The Collected Edition, and his new comic through IDW Publishing, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ministry-Compliance-1-John-Ridley-ebook/dp/B0CCJZDCK5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Ministry of Compliance</a>, will be published on November 15. Ridley has wrapped his latest film, Netflix’s Shirley, which he wrote and directed and features Regina King as America’s first Black Congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm. In the fall of 2018, Ridley opened NO Studios, a space for the arts and community, in his hometown of Milwaukee.

John Ridley

Three Great Things: John Ridley

An Tran is a director and producer based in Los Angeles and Vietnam. She directed the documentary <a href="https://fortomorrow.org/documentary" target="_blank" rel="noopener">For Tomorrow</a>, about people worldwide making innovative change in their communities, is now streaming on Prime Video. An co-directed/produced the feature documentary Moving Pictures: Filmmaking and the Art of Cinematography, which premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2020 and directed and produced more than 50 episodes of the web series The Filmmakers View. Her producing credits include The Summer People for director Todd Louiso and the indie feature Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf, written and directed by Susan Youssef. She formerly ran the ARRI Emerging Filmmaker Grant program, where she championed award-winning films like Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station and Beach Rats. The daughter of political refugees who fled Vietnam at the end of the war, she grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and is currently finishing the documentary Tran 5, about her experiences growing up in the Midwest and then returning to Vietnam.

An Tran

How Leaving the Life I Knew Saved Me

In 2015, Oakland-based group Thao &amp; The Get Down Stay Down was invited to perform in Vietnam by the Hanoi US Embassy, as part of a celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of normalization of relations between the two countries. It was also bandleader Thao Nguyen’s first visit to her homeland. Accompanied by her mom, who had not been to Vietnam in 43 years since fleeing the war, this trip laid the groundwork for the band’s most recent, critically acclaimed album, <a href="https://dominorecordco.cmail20.com/t/d-l-cttklyk-ykdthklrtk-o/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Temple</a>. Nobody Dies, a 2017 film directed by Todd Krolczyk, documents that trip. “A profound short documentary that lays bare the bittersweet joy of returning to a homeland tarnished by personal and political loss” per KQED, it was initially broadcast on PBS in partnership with the Center For Asian American Media.

Thao Nguyen

Music

Thao Nguyen Embraces Her Cultural Heritage and Her Queer Identity After the Fact and Right On Time

Ash Mayfair was born in Vietnam and educated in the UK and the US. She received a BA from Oxford University for English Literature, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London for theatre directing and received an MFA in filmmaking at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her first feature, <a href="https://www.filmmovement.com/theatrical/film/the-third-wife" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Third Wife</a>, is in select theaters through Film Movement from May 17. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the NETPAC Jury Award, and also won awards at the San Sebastian, Milano, Chicago, Minsk, Kolkata and Cairo film festivals. Ash is working on her second feature, tentatively titled Skin of Youth, about an all-consuming love story between a transgender singer and a dog-cage fighter set in 1990s Saigon, Vietnam.

Ash Mayfair

Pieces of Myself

Vietnam