MINH ANH NGUYỄN

FILM / DREHBUCH UND REGIE

nguyen.minh-anh@web.de

  • Minh Anh Nguyễn is a German-Vietnamese filmmaker. Born to Vietnamese contract workers who fled from former Czechoslovakia to Germany, she initially studied sculpture and video at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe before completing her film studies at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (HfG) in 2025 with her diploma film „so much water, so close to home“.

    Nguyễn’s work explores trauma, silence, and memory across fiction, documentary, and hybrid cinematic forms. The latter combine narrative storytelling with performative reenactments captured in a documentary mode, as well as archival material. Her films disrupt linear narratives to make visible what has been repressed or forgotten, transcending cultural and identity boundaries to create a shared canvas for empathy.

    Her films have been shown at Filmfest Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel), Independent Days (Karlsruhe), and Sehsüchte – International Student Film Festival (Babelsberg). Since 2021, she has been a scholarship holder of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), and in 2025 she was awarded the Prize of the Federal Competition for Art Students
    (27. Bundeswettbewerb für Kunststudierende).

    She lives and works in Hà Nội and Cologne, and is currently completing her postgraduate studies in film at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln (KHM).

SO MUCH WATER, SO CLOSE TO HOME

2025 / 47 min / Essay Film

As a child, Minh Anh Nguyễn was sexually abused. Her film is an attempt to put words onto this difficult part of her life, to speak the unspeakable and regain a sense of self through the reflection and projection that the act of filmmaking allows. It reveals intimate conversations between the filmmaker and her mother, navigating the challenging process of bringing this trauma into the public sphere. The film moves through a wounded intimacy — blending fiction, archival footage, and documentary in search of a language to articulate the past and embrace the future.

ONKEL THUẬN / UNCLE THUẬN

2025 / 45 min / Pilot episode of a documentary series

Thuận and Thúy, two former GDR contract workers, have been running the Peking restaurant in Germany for over 20 years. After hours, the musician Thuận, connects with the world via livestream, while Thúy holds the family and business together, despite the toll of many years of hard work. Their eldest daughter, Hà Linh, now living in Berlin and expecting a child, reflects on the third generation. Her younger sister, Hà Vy, who barely speaks Vietnamese, searches for a connection to their family’s story. Through archival footage and quiet, intimate observations, the film explores the Vietnamese diaspora in Germany — and the intergenerational challenges of identity and belonging.

EINE MASCHINE FLIEGT IN DIE LUFT / ALL STARS BURN OUT EVENTUALLY

2024 / 49 min / Tragicomedy

Mr. Seins is the top student at the Butler Academy. His achievements are nothing short of outstanding, while many of his classmates struggle with the high expectations of the director and the constant pressure of competition. But slowly, an unspeakable horror lurking behind the academy’s structure begins to unfold. Seins’ precisely structured world starts to unravel.

2025    Nomination for Best Medium-Length Film at the 29th Filmfest Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel

TO CUT A LONG STORY SHORT

2021 / 71 min / Tragicomedy

The brunette meets the macho. Their shared odyssey takes them to an island, a swimming pool, and a Dionysian bathroom. Too bad she’s a fish who’s afraid of the water. The redheads meet on the dance floor and speak as if with one voice. Magic sweeps them away — but why does the schizophrenic have to show up just then? And then there’s the night porter, secretly dancing in the hotel staff restroom. He’s clearly infatuated with the pretty waitress from the diner around the corner, but while he admires her over the pages of his Camus novel, the stranger suddenly appears — and everyone takes a different path …

2024    Nomination for Best Comedy at the Beyond Filmfestival 2024 in Feuchtwangen
2023    Award for Best Film Score at the 22nd Independent Days Internationale Filmfestspiele in Karlsruhe
2022    Nomination for Best Production at the 51. Sehsüchte Film Festival in Babelsberg