Quyên Nguyen-Le (they/them) is a queer vietnamese filmmaker born to refugee parents where Chumash and Tongva lands meet (San Fernando Valley, Los Ángeles). Quyên's film work--spanning between documentary and scripted genres--focuses on the ways histories are deeply felt in the quotidian everyday.

Co-directed with Tad Nakamura, Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement, follows the decades long artistic career of iconic Asian American movement activist Nobuko Miyamoto.

In Living Memory (2022), a eulogy to their mother's nail salon that permanently closed during the COVID pandemic, is currently streaming on PBS as an episode of WORLD Channel's daytime emmy nominated limited series Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond.

Regularly studied in university classrooms, their films Nước (Water/Homeland) (2016) and Hoài (Ongoing, Memory) (2018) have also screened in film festivals, art galleries, public libraries, and community spaces worldwide. 

Recently, Quyên was also an Associate Producer for two Sundance award winning feature films - Julie Ha and Eugene Yi's Free Chol Soo Lee and Sing J. Lee's The Accidental Getaway Driver.

In 2024, Quyên was awarded two Emerging Artist awards--from Arts Orange County and Visual Communications. Their work has been supported by Kartemquin Films, Points North Institute, Center for Asian American Media, the National Multicultural Alliance's Producer Lab, Visual Communications, and the California Arts Council.

Outside of filmmaking, Quyên is a "legal guardian" of two.

You can reach them @smellydurianface on instagram.

ELSEWHERE

PRESS
Los Angeles Times
San Diego Union Tribune
Diacritics
Teen Vogue
​Buzzfeed
Sahtu Press
Long Beach Post
Visual Communications
The Advocate
Vietcetera
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​RADIO/ PODCASTS
Queering the Air, 3CR, Melbourne Australia
Asian Voices Radio Podcast
LGBT & Viet Identities In Cinema, My Vietnam Podcast

SCHOLARLY MENTIONS