Assistant professor for Georgetown University’s Theater and Performance Studies (TPST) program Van Tran Nguyen premiered her feature-length film “The Motherload” at the 44th Annual Hawaii International Film Festival in Oahu, Hawaii Oct. 7. 

The 92-minute film, presented in part by the Vilcek Foundation’s New American Perspectives program supporting immigrant filmmakers, centers on a Vietnamese American mother-daughter duo. Nguyen and her real-life mother, Sang Tran, play a fictional mother-daughter pair, recreating and satirizing iconic American Vietnam War movie scenes. 

Nguyen said that the aim is to challenge prevailing U.S. mythologies about the conflict through this performance.

“We’re looking at all of the famous movies that are made by American directors about the Vietnam War and really hold the material accountable, and I do that by reenacting some of these shots shot-for-shot with my mother,” Nguyen told The Hoya. 

“So what does it feel like, what does it mean when you watch? Like, you know, the very famous. ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning,’ but it’s said by a Vietnamese woman,” she added. 

The creation of “The Motherload” was an intimate, small-scale production, co-directed by Nguyen and her husband, Alex Derwick. This minimalist approach extends to the cast, with Nguyen and her mother as the sole actors.

Nguyen said she wanted to center the movie around her perspective, influencing her decision to have the cast be just her and her mother. 

“We play multiple roles. And it’s kind of to poke fun at the question of representation and how deeply simple it is,” Nguyen said. “So in the project, I kind of exhaust representation by only representing myself and my mother over and over and over again.” 

Nguyen said that although the film focuses on dire topics such as the war and conflict in Vietnam, she still incorporated comedic elements.

“At the heart of it is a story about me and my mother, and kind of intergenerational migration and taking what we learned from like the very various drips of knowledge that we get from our families over time and dealing with the confluences of them at once,” Nguyen said. “Although it’s quite intense, it’s actually quite funny.”

Briana Sparacino, (SFS ’25) a student in the performing arts program, said she hopes that this achievement opens up new doors for the TPST program.

“I have an avid interest in pursuing a career in the film industry,” Sparacino wrote to The Hoya. “While film is not under the TPST umbrella and has its own minor, I do hope that such an achievement by a professor could encourage Georgetown to offer a greater variety of film classes that allow students to work on films in a more hands-on context.” 

Kat Martinez (CAS ’25), a current student in Nguyen’s Adaptation and Performance and Literature course, which discusses adaptations of literature and media through different kinds of performance, said the course has been exciting and inventive, with Nguyen encouraging students to take creative liberties in their work.

“My favorite project that we’ve done so far has been our folklore performance, in which we were allowed to choose any folklore piece and adapt it into a live radio or podcast performance,” Martinez wrote to The Hoya. “Thinking about the soundscape and the impact of the purely sonic, we had to experiment with sound effects, music, diegetic/non-diegetic noise and speech patterns.”

Martinez also said having a professor with experience in full-length feature filmmaking brings a new perspective to the course.

“She has amazing instincts that make our in-class performances all the more strong,” Martinez wrote. “Although I do not have much experience in or desire for creating films in the future, I deeply appreciate the advice she gives when script writing.” 

Nguyen said she never expected to be a filmmaker, and did not start filmmaking until she was in her PhD program, though she encourages students with passion or curiosity toward making movies to experiment.

“My advice is to kind of be delighted by failure and be even a little charmed by it — it’s quite helpful,” Nguyen said. “Movie-making is a process that is full of failure and I think it’s really lovely to embrace it.”