Khai Thu Nguyen is an award-winning filmmaker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in Vietnam, Khai immigrated with her family to the US (San Diego) when she was 6 years old. Khai's father was a well-known Vietnamese painter who stopped painting in his struggle to adjust to the US; her experience of such loss and dislocation motivates her to make films to shine a light on people whose stories are not traditionally told. Khai’s short films Table Stakes on two African American comic book creators and their striving in the industry, and Alexa and May based on her mother's relationship with her frenemy the Amazon Alexa, have shown at festivals all over the U.S. She was field producer for HBO Max's documentary series Not So Pretty, focused on toxic chemicals in the beauty industry in communities such as Vietnamese American manicurists. Khai’s upcoming feature documentary The Full Thao about identity-making and comedy performance is supported by the Center for Asian American Media documentary fund and BAVC Media, and her short Memoirs of May is funded by the Still I Rise Films Fellowship for US women artists. She is a BAVC National Mediamaker 2024 Fellow, SFFilm Rainin Grant finalist, and BAVC Mediamaker Connect 2023 Mentee.

Previously Khai directed and produced theater in Vietnam and the SF Bay Area. Other grants from Fulbright-Hays, UC Pacific Rim, and Royal Norwegian Embassy have supported her work. She received her B.A. in Humanities from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley, where she has had extensive experience in higher education administration, research and teaching.

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