The Empathizer
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | Film Short
Documentary
Young professionals of the Vietnamese diaspora are returning in waves to start new lives in the country that their parents had fled decades ago. Let's talk about why, and explore the complex sentiments and meaning of "coming back."
The Empathizer
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | Film Short
Documentary
Green Light
This campaign raised $7,850 for production. Follow the filmmaker to receive future updates on this project.
39 supporters | followers
Enter the amount you would like to pledge
Young professionals of the Vietnamese diaspora are returning in waves to start new lives in the country that their parents had fled decades ago. Let's talk about why, and explore the complex sentiments and meaning of "coming back."
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, thousands of Vietnamese families were uprooted, reset, and reassembled in distant cities like Berlin, New Orleans, Vancouver, San Jose, and Paris. The children of refugees are colloquially known as Viet Kieu, and many of us have either lost or never felt a real connection to the motherland as we focused on carving out our own lives and identities as children of immigrants. "Vietnamese" may be our identity, but "Vietnam" was some faraway place that our parents used to live.
In response to the country’s recent rapid urban, economic, and technological growth, millennial Viet Kieu have begun returning to the country seeking...something. It was reported in 2015 that over 12,000 overseas Vietnamese had returned to live in Saigon with hundreds more expatriates entering every year.
I was one of those overseas Vietnamese, taking advantage of the five-year visa granted to me by the Vietnamese Embassy in California for like sixty bucks. What started as a week-long vacation inspired a one-year stay in Hanoi, which became almost three years living luxuriously for a fraction of what I would've paid to have roommates in LA. It took years before I realized that my existing in "communist-controlled" Vietnam had worried my mother, who is still so traumatized by her experiences during and after the war that she still refuses to set foot in the country.
In this documentary I’ll be speaking with other millennial diasporic Vietnamese who made the same choice as I did back in 2016, to leave their comfortable lives in “developed” countries to start anew in the land that their parents had gone through so much turmoil to escape from just a few decades ago. Let's figure out what draws us to this land.
There's no shortage of articles, blogs, and vlogs highlighting the accomplishments of various Viet Kieu who have found success and/or happiness in their newly settled lives in Southeast Asia. This documentary will not be another “Tell us about what you’re doing in Vietnam?” piece of content. I hope to uncover the copmlex sentiments and emotions associated with being a Viet Kieu in Vietnam. I want to hear about how Viet Kieu, who have the reputation of being financially secure and well-educated compared to their local counterparts, view themselves when they’ve “returned” to Vietnam. I’m curious about the native-Vietnamese perception of these well-fed transplants. I want to hear about the reactions of the parents who thought their immigration would last generations. Who feels like they’re finally “home”, and who feels more foreign than ever?
Vietnamese families, particularly those with roots in the trauma that comes from the refugee experience, are famously averse to discussing their emotions and histories. By shining a spotlight on the motivations and feelings these intrepid young adults experience as they make their moves abroad, we can inspire dialogues between immigrants and their offspring, to take steps toward understanding and fixing the hurt and distrust that is so prevalent in our communities. Through our frank and honest conversations captured on video, I hope to increase understanding and evoke empathy that has been so lacking in the modern Vietnamese family. It is important to have these conversations about the dynamics of immigrant families, the concept of belonging, and to examine how generational trauma is passed on and digested through stories, time, and proximity.
Here's a preview of some of the interview subjects we'll be highlighting in this film!
.jpg)
We're looking forward to capturing the stories, sentiments and endeavors of this wide spectrum of young Viet Kieu and showcase the wealth of opportunity that is abundant in modern-day Vietnam, a country that barely resembles that which our parents had left when they were youngsters themselves.
.png)
Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel is a seminal work of the Vietnamese diaspora and a huge influence on galvanizing my pride as a Vietnamese-American, especially one whose father served years as a POW after his brief stint in the South Vietnamese Army. The title refers to the narrator's ability to sympathize with both sides of the conflict, and as I began to think about the themes of this documentary I began to see parallels with my goals for this doc.
Through documenting conversations that rarely occur in the modern Vietnamese family, our hope is that we can help encourage empathy among second and first-generation immigrants who too-often fail to see eye to eye.
My first choice was "The Simp-athizer" but it was brought to my attention that Gen-Z has turned that term into something sexual so here we are.
Bret and I will be flying in to Saigon on 10/23/22 to spend ten days meeting and hanging out with our documentary subjects as we capture their stories. We're lucky to be shooting in a country that has has had COVID restrictions lifted in public places, but will be carefully monitoring the current government regulations and be observing physical distancing protocols and abiding with any imposed mask mandates to maintain a safe production environment throughout our shoot.
One of the great challenges of documentary filmmaking is that the story can be ever-changing as production marches along, wraps up, through our marathon sessions in the editing booth. At this stage in pre-production, we are envisioning this film as a half-hour documentary that we can submit to shortform film festivals such as Hot Docs, Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance, and of course the Viet Film Fest. We also have plans to pitch our completed project to respectable news outlets that would help us amplify our collected stories such as Saigoneer, The South China Morning Post, and NYT Op-Docs.
As filmmakers who value collaboration and especially the opinions of those who might have a personal connection with the subject matter of this film, we're offering anyone who signs on as an Associate Producer the opportunity to view an early cut of the project in a virtual screening as soon as it's ready, which we aim to host around February 2023. The online screening will include a Q&A in which the producers and filmmakers can share feedback and share suggestions on how best to convey the themes of the project.
Upon completion of the film, we will be hosting viewing parties and receptions in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, either of which any of our Seed&Spark contributors is warmly welcome to attend. So be sure to FOLLOW our project for frequent updates!
We first want to thank you sincerely for making it through all this copy. That's a lot of writing about something that doesn't exist yet! You can help contribute in several different ways, and we're so grateful for anything you can help out with.
SHARE on your social media!
Post about our project and be sure to tag us @empathizerdoc on IG!
Here's an image you can save and post to your Instagram grid. Feel free to tag the filmmakers @fredle and @onlyonet too!
.jpg)
We've also got a version that you can post to your stories!
.jpg)
FOLLOW US on Seed&Spark!
Give us a follow so we can keep you in the loop on stories from production, updates on progress, and the upcoming events we have planned for our contributors!
Our follower count helps the platform recognize our project as one that has lots of people interested. By giving us a follow, you can get us closer to reaping the awesome perks that they offer independent filmmakers, such as discounts on equipment rentals and aid for film festival applications.
ATTEND our upcoming fundraiser!
If you're in the LA area, come join us at Third Wheel Hollywood on Friday September 30th from 7PM to 10PM for our fundraiser mixer before Fred and Bret set off to shoot in Saigon! Enjoy some libations and live entertainment while meeting cool people at one of our favorite event spaces in Hollywood! And of course if you've pledged at least $10 to our campaign, come claim your free crispy egg roll. Give us a follow on Seed&Spark stay up to date on any future event announcements.
You can RSVP to the event here!
MAKE A PLEDGE to this campaign!
We are so grateful for any contribution to this passion project. Documentary filmmaking is a labor of love and any bit financial support aids us immensely in telling our stories the way we want them to be told.
Our costs range from travel and meals for the crew to equipment rental and video storage, and film festival submissions once we've completed the project. Every bit will go a long way, thanks so much for your help and interest!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Vietnamese Crew
Costs $2,000
Day rates, rental fees, and meals for our Vietnamese crew.
Travel and lodging in Vietnam
Costs $1,500
Travel to Vietnam for our LA-based crew.
Initial Production Costs
Costs $3,000
Equipment rental, operation, and labor.
Hard Drives
Costs $250
Hard drives to back up all the dank footage we shoot.
Space rental for fundraiser
Costs $350
Fundraiser event in LA featuring comedy and cocktails. Check the Updates tab for your invite!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
About Bret Hamilton @onlyonet
Director of Photography, Producer
In fall of 2016, Bret moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 2017, Bret produced and led scores of short documentaries as the Digital Content Director for local media start-up Vietcetera. From 2017-2019 he was Director of Photography for the Webby award winning food and travel youtube channel Best Ever Food Review Show, where he led the visual and editorial aesthetic of the channel from 300k subscribers to 3.5 million, accruing nearly half a billion views from a widely diverse global audience. While in Saigon, Bret was also the Director of Photography and Producer of Jimmy in Saigon, a feature length documentary that won Best Documentary at the Lover's Film Festival in Turin, Italy in early 2022.
About Fred Le @fredle
Director, Producer
I am a comedian based in LA. I spent a lot of my adolescence participating in Vietnamese-American community organizations such as Boy Scouts and Vietnamese language school, but didn’t truly feel a connection to the actual country of Vietnam until I took that first vacation in 2016 which led to a 3-year long residency. I’ve spent almost all of my early thirties as a visitor from overseas, and I’m still processing my experience and this new facet of my Vietnamese-American identity.
As a performer I’ve been invited to showcase at festivals such as San Francisco Sketchfest, Oakland Comedy Festival, Treefort Music Festival, and Boom Chicago Festival in Amsterdam.
A longtime producer of live comedy shows, this year I co-created a Vietnamese stand-up showcase called Embarrassed by Night that we continue to put on at theaters and clubs around California. The show is a loving homage to the well-known Vietnamese institution Paris by Night and has sold out every iteration so far.
[A snippet of EBN SJ which you can unlock by contributing to our project!]
While living in Hanoi I had an amazing time working for VTV International as a host and script writer for the documentary show Vietnam A to Z and language program Xin Chao Vietnam . This is my first documentary.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, thousands of Vietnamese families were uprooted, reset, and reassembled in distant cities like Berlin, New Orleans, Vancouver, San Jose, and Paris. The children of refugees are colloquially known as Viet Kieu, and many of us have either lost or never felt a real connection to the motherland as we focused on carving out our own lives and identities as children of immigrants. "Vietnamese" may be our identity, but "Vietnam" was some faraway place that our parents used to live.
In response to the country’s recent rapid urban, economic, and technological growth, millennial Viet Kieu have begun returning to the country seeking...something. It was reported in 2015 that over 12,000 overseas Vietnamese had returned to live in Saigon with hundreds more expatriates entering every year.
I was one of those overseas Vietnamese, taking advantage of the five-year visa granted to me by the Vietnamese Embassy in California for like sixty bucks. What started as a week-long vacation inspired a one-year stay in Hanoi, which became almost three years living luxuriously for a fraction of what I would've paid to have roommates in LA. It took years before I realized that my existing in "communist-controlled" Vietnam had worried my mother, who is still so traumatized by her experiences during and after the war that she still refuses to set foot in the country.
In this documentary I’ll be speaking with other millennial diasporic Vietnamese who made the same choice as I did back in 2016, to leave their comfortable lives in “developed” countries to start anew in the land that their parents had gone through so much turmoil to escape from just a few decades ago. Let's figure out what draws us to this land.
There's no shortage of articles, blogs, and vlogs highlighting the accomplishments of various Viet Kieu who have found success and/or happiness in their newly settled lives in Southeast Asia. This documentary will not be another “Tell us about what you’re doing in Vietnam?” piece of content. I hope to uncover the copmlex sentiments and emotions associated with being a Viet Kieu in Vietnam. I want to hear about how Viet Kieu, who have the reputation of being financially secure and well-educated compared to their local counterparts, view themselves when they’ve “returned” to Vietnam. I’m curious about the native-Vietnamese perception of these well-fed transplants. I want to hear about the reactions of the parents who thought their immigration would last generations. Who feels like they’re finally “home”, and who feels more foreign than ever?
Vietnamese families, particularly those with roots in the trauma that comes from the refugee experience, are famously averse to discussing their emotions and histories. By shining a spotlight on the motivations and feelings these intrepid young adults experience as they make their moves abroad, we can inspire dialogues between immigrants and their offspring, to take steps toward understanding and fixing the hurt and distrust that is so prevalent in our communities. Through our frank and honest conversations captured on video, I hope to increase understanding and evoke empathy that has been so lacking in the modern Vietnamese family. It is important to have these conversations about the dynamics of immigrant families, the concept of belonging, and to examine how generational trauma is passed on and digested through stories, time, and proximity.
Here's a preview of some of the interview subjects we'll be highlighting in this film!
We're looking forward to capturing the stories, sentiments and endeavors of this wide spectrum of young Viet Kieu and showcase the wealth of opportunity that is abundant in modern-day Vietnam, a country that barely resembles that which our parents had left when they were youngsters themselves.
Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel is a seminal work of the Vietnamese diaspora and a huge influence on galvanizing my pride as a Vietnamese-American, especially one whose father served years as a POW after his brief stint in the South Vietnamese Army. The title refers to the narrator's ability to sympathize with both sides of the conflict, and as I began to think about the themes of this documentary I began to see parallels with my goals for this doc.
Through documenting conversations that rarely occur in the modern Vietnamese family, our hope is that we can help encourage empathy among second and first-generation immigrants who too-often fail to see eye to eye.
My first choice was "The Simp-athizer" but it was brought to my attention that Gen-Z has turned that term into something sexual so here we are.
Bret and I will be flying in to Saigon on 10/23/22 to spend ten days meeting and hanging out with our documentary subjects as we capture their stories. We're lucky to be shooting in a country that has has had COVID restrictions lifted in public places, but will be carefully monitoring the current government regulations and be observing physical distancing protocols and abiding with any imposed mask mandates to maintain a safe production environment throughout our shoot.
One of the great challenges of documentary filmmaking is that the story can be ever-changing as production marches along, wraps up, through our marathon sessions in the editing booth. At this stage in pre-production, we are envisioning this film as a half-hour documentary that we can submit to shortform film festivals such as Hot Docs, Toronto International Film Festival, Sundance, and of course the Viet Film Fest. We also have plans to pitch our completed project to respectable news outlets that would help us amplify our collected stories such as Saigoneer, The South China Morning Post, and NYT Op-Docs.
As filmmakers who value collaboration and especially the opinions of those who might have a personal connection with the subject matter of this film, we're offering anyone who signs on as an Associate Producer the opportunity to view an early cut of the project in a virtual screening as soon as it's ready, which we aim to host around February 2023. The online screening will include a Q&A in which the producers and filmmakers can share feedback and share suggestions on how best to convey the themes of the project.
Upon completion of the film, we will be hosting viewing parties and receptions in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, either of which any of our Seed&Spark contributors is warmly welcome to attend. So be sure to FOLLOW our project for frequent updates!
We first want to thank you sincerely for making it through all this copy. That's a lot of writing about something that doesn't exist yet! You can help contribute in several different ways, and we're so grateful for anything you can help out with.
SHARE on your social media!
Post about our project and be sure to tag us @empathizerdoc on IG!
Here's an image you can save and post to your Instagram grid. Feel free to tag the filmmakers @fredle and @onlyonet too!
We've also got a version that you can post to your stories!
FOLLOW US on Seed&Spark!
Give us a follow so we can keep you in the loop on stories from production, updates on progress, and the upcoming events we have planned for our contributors!
Our follower count helps the platform recognize our project as one that has lots of people interested. By giving us a follow, you can get us closer to reaping the awesome perks that they offer independent filmmakers, such as discounts on equipment rentals and aid for film festival applications.
ATTEND our upcoming fundraiser!
If you're in the LA area, come join us at Third Wheel Hollywood on Friday September 30th from 7PM to 10PM for our fundraiser mixer before Fred and Bret set off to shoot in Saigon! Enjoy some libations and live entertainment while meeting cool people at one of our favorite event spaces in Hollywood! And of course if you've pledged at least $10 to our campaign, come claim your free crispy egg roll. Give us a follow on Seed&Spark stay up to date on any future event announcements.
You can RSVP to the event here!
MAKE A PLEDGE to this campaign!
We are so grateful for any contribution to this passion project. Documentary filmmaking is a labor of love and any bit financial support aids us immensely in telling our stories the way we want them to be told.
Our costs range from travel and meals for the crew to equipment rental and video storage, and film festival submissions once we've completed the project. Every bit will go a long way, thanks so much for your help and interest!
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Vietnamese Crew
Costs $2,000
Day rates, rental fees, and meals for our Vietnamese crew.
Travel and lodging in Vietnam
Costs $1,500
Travel to Vietnam for our LA-based crew.
Initial Production Costs
Costs $3,000
Equipment rental, operation, and labor.
Hard Drives
Costs $250
Hard drives to back up all the dank footage we shoot.
Space rental for fundraiser
Costs $350
Fundraiser event in LA featuring comedy and cocktails. Check the Updates tab for your invite!
Cash Pledge
Costs $0
Direct link:
Share this update!
About This Team
About Bret Hamilton @onlyonet
Director of Photography, Producer
In fall of 2016, Bret moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In 2017, Bret produced and led scores of short documentaries as the Digital Content Director for local media start-up Vietcetera. From 2017-2019 he was Director of Photography for the Webby award winning food and travel youtube channel Best Ever Food Review Show, where he led the visual and editorial aesthetic of the channel from 300k subscribers to 3.5 million, accruing nearly half a billion views from a widely diverse global audience. While in Saigon, Bret was also the Director of Photography and Producer of Jimmy in Saigon, a feature length documentary that won Best Documentary at the Lover's Film Festival in Turin, Italy in early 2022.
About Fred Le @fredle
Director, Producer
I am a comedian based in LA. I spent a lot of my adolescence participating in Vietnamese-American community organizations such as Boy Scouts and Vietnamese language school, but didn’t truly feel a connection to the actual country of Vietnam until I took that first vacation in 2016 which led to a 3-year long residency. I’ve spent almost all of my early thirties as a visitor from overseas, and I’m still processing my experience and this new facet of my Vietnamese-American identity.
As a performer I’ve been invited to showcase at festivals such as San Francisco Sketchfest, Oakland Comedy Festival, Treefort Music Festival, and Boom Chicago Festival in Amsterdam.
A longtime producer of live comedy shows, this year I co-created a Vietnamese stand-up showcase called Embarrassed by Night that we continue to put on at theaters and clubs around California. The show is a loving homage to the well-known Vietnamese institution Paris by Night and has sold out every iteration so far.
[A snippet of EBN SJ which you can unlock by contributing to our project!]
While living in Hanoi I had an amazing time working for VTV International as a host and script writer for the documentary show Vietnam A to Z and language program Xin Chao Vietnam . This is my first documentary.