Artistic Differences Invites Trương Minh Quý

Artistic Differences  returns with a revelatory conversation with filmmaker Trương Minh Quý, whose work reshapes our understanding of memory, history, and exile. In this latest episode, our hosts Cintia Gil and Christopher Allen sit down with Quý to explore his radical approach to storytelling—one that collapses time, unsettles the distinction between reality and imagination, and challenges who gets to author history.

For Quý, home is never fixed—it is something we carry, something that is constantly reimagined. His poetic 2019 film The Tree House unfolds through the gaze of a filmmaker exiled on Mars, looking back at a Vietnam that is fragmented, obscured, and slipping away. Through intimate oral histories and archival images, Quý questions how history is recorded, what gets preserved, and why some stories are left to disappear. His filmmaking resists singular authorship, instead offering something more porous—a space where voices, histories, and memories converge. The Tree House asks: What if history isn’t linear, but something that overlaps, loops, and erodes? What if time itself is a kind of exile?

In the episode, he speaks about the paradox of making films that document a reality he can no longer access, the philosophical underpinnings of his editing choices, and the eerie way censorship has made him visible in precisely the way he sought to evade. He describes how state power manufactures fear, creating invisible obstacles that shape not just artistic freedom, but the very way a filmmaker sees themselves.

Tune in! And if you want to step further into Quý’s world, watch The Tree House — the film is now streaming on the UnionDocs membership!

And considering joining next month’s cineclub on the first Saturday of December. Sign up!

Thanks to our incredible team!

Editor: Alison Rodgers

Mixer: Pedro Castro 

Music: Andres Simoes 

Production support: Tara Kesavan

Additional UnionDocs support provided by A.S.M Kobayashi & Scott Limbacher

This is a production of UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art. 

ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES is co-curated and co-organized by Cíntia Gil, Christopher Allen & Jenny Miller.