Recognition & Achievement

My short film Kat won the Grand Prize at Showtime Network's Alternative Media Festival. Later, Tarantino told me personally that it influenced a character in Kill Bill. I didn't know what to do with that information for about a week. Still working on it.

A Boat Story made it to Sundance Writers' Lab as a finalist. For a story drawn this directly from family history — from what it felt like to leave, from what it cost — that recognition meant the work had traveled further than just us.

My short film Home, shot in IMAX format, won the Audience Award at Austin Film Festival in 2024. Sometimes the smallest stories need the biggest canvas. That gamble paid off.

Vietnow, the magazine I founded in 1995 as the first national English-language Vietnamese American publication, is now part of a permanent Smithsonian exhibit. Surreal is the right word. It means something was built that lasted.

Film & Video Magazine put me on the cover, recognized as part of a new generation of filmmakers working across multiple disciplines. At the time, that combination — VFX, directing, writing, producing — wasn't the norm. Now it's called a multi-hyphenate. Then it was just how I worked.

The recognition that means the most doesn't come with a credential. It's when someone tells us our work helped them feel less alone. That's the metric without a ceiling.