When a Comedian Picked Up a Camera: One Viet Kieu's Search for Identity
Fred Le grew up in the Bay Area to refugee parents. In 2017, he moved to Vietnam with one question -- why wouldn't his mother go back? His documentary follows 20-plus Viet Kieu seeking answers.
In 2017, Fred Le made a decision that baffled his family: he moved to Vietnam.
He was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. His parents were refugees who fled after the war. To him, Vietnam was a place that existed only in family memory -- the homeland his mother spoke of, yet the place she refused to set foot in again.
"I wanted to know why my mom wouldn't go back."
With that question, he bought a one-way ticket.
Discovering How "Un-Vietnamese" He Was
Fred chose to settle in Hanoi first, not the south where his family came from. The north felt more foreign, more exciting.
Reality hit fast.
"Within weeks, I realized how un-Vietnamese I was. My accent was completely off. My language skills were far worse than I thought," he recalled. Worse, the moment locals identified him as Viet Kieu, their attitude shifted. "They lost patience pretty quickly."
That feeling of not being accepted as one of their own became the starting point for his documentary.
Stories of Over Twenty Viet Kieu
After three years in Vietnam, Fred started filming people with similar experiences.
In 2024, his documentary The Empathizer premiered at Viet Film Fest and was nominated for Best Feature. It follows more than 20 second-generation Viet Kieu -- some came to start businesses, some to rediscover themselves, some simply to escape life in America.
What they share is a single question: "Where do I actually belong?"
Language Is the Biggest Barrier
Many subjects in the film cite Vietnamese as their greatest source of frustration.
The issue goes beyond fluency. Vietnamese personal pronouns shift based on the age and social standing of the person you are talking to. Many Viet Kieu grew up speaking Vietnamese only with elders, defaulting to "con" -- a term a child uses with parents -- to refer to themselves.
The result? Talking to peers, they sound like a toddler being cute.
"It makes it very hard to be taken seriously," Fred said.
Why Do the Children Want to Return to the Place Their Parents Fled?
This is the central question of The Empathizer.
For many first-generation immigrants, Vietnam carries too much painful history. But for the second generation raised in America, Vietnam represents opportunity -- a place where "people who look like me" are everywhere.
During filming, one scene caught Fred off guard and brought him to tears: the Hello Vietnam song playing on a VietJet flight. He could not explain why, but in that moment, something buried deep was stirred.
That scene became the emotional core of the entire film.
He Still Has No Answer
After finishing the documentary, Fred moved back to Los Angeles.
He did not choose to stay in Vietnam. But those three years changed him. He leaned into creative work about Vietnamese-American identity -- in 2022, he and friends launched Embarrassed by Night, an all-Vietnamese-American comedy night.
Ask him where he belongs now?
He would probably just laugh and say: "I still don't know."
And maybe that question was never meant to have a definitive answer.
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