Diana Cam Van Nguyen’s Experimental Memoir ‘Love, Dad’ Premieres Online
Love, Dad (2021), the award-winning experimental memoir about a daughter and father attempting to reconnect, is now available online.
This innovative and emotionally powerful collage film combines letters, stop-motion cutouts, rotoscoping, and archival photos. It revolves around the letters that filmmaker Diana Cam Van Nguyen received from her estranged father while he was in prison. Upon rediscovering them years later, she decides it was time to respond and come to terms with the choices that fractured their family.
Bittersweet and deeply personal, Love, Dad is a bold exploration of generational and cultural conflict, shaped by the father’s adherence to certain outmoded beliefs.
Nguyen reflects:
When I was 11 years old, my dad wrote me letters from prison, filled with love. As I grew up, our relationship changed, and such acts of love seemed to disappear. I regret the distance between us. Now, 15 years later, I am answering my dad’s letters, confronting the past that led to our family’s breakup, and trying to understand him.
Nguyen is a Czech-Vietnamese director based in Prague, specializing in animated documentaries. A FAMU graduate, her films The Little One (2017), Apart (2018), and the one featured here today have won numerous awards, including at Berlinale, AFI Fest, and BFI London Film Festival. She is currently developing a live-action/animation feature.
Love, Dad received funding from the Czech Film Fund, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, and Filmtalent Zlín.