Bao Nguyen is an award-winning Vietnamese American filmmaker whose past work has been seen in the New York Times, HBO, NBC, ABC, Vice, ESPN, and PBS, among many others. He has. directed, produced, and shot a number of short films, which have played internationally in numerous festivals and museums including MoMA and the Smithsonian. Before he began his career in film, he was at AmeriCorps helping to revitalize New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood after September 11th and also worked as a campaign staffer for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. His feature doc directorial debut, LIVE FROM NEW YORK!, celebrating 40 years of Saturday Night Live opened the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. His latest directorial effort, BE WATER, was an official selection of the 2020 Sundance, SXSW, and Cannes Film Festival and broadcast on ESPN’s prestigious 30 for 30 series. He most recently directed TOGETHER starring Olivia Munn, Ken Jeong, Simu Liu, Lisa Ling, and Winston Duke. The short film was part of GoFundMe’s Stop Asian Hate campaign which has raised nearly $6 million dollars for grassroots Asian American organizations. He is a 2011 PBS/WGBH Producers Workshop Fellow, an alumnus of the 2012 and 2014 Berlinale Talent Campus, and a Firelight Media Fellow. He earned his BA in Politics/International Relations at NYU and his MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is a founding partner of EAST FILMS, a production company aimed at creating high-quality content in Asia as well as changing the perception of Vietnamese cinema abroad.