No Crying at the Dinner Table

Carol Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal, Canada. Her parents immigrated to Canada from their native Vietnam in pursuit of a better life for their children. But the family has been through a lot – and there is a lot they do not really know about each other. Carol Nguyen turns the camera on three of her relatives: her mother, her father, and her sister. She interviews them all individually on the subject of family and loss. She asks her mother about her relationship with her own parents, and her father speaks about a tragic suicide that has left him wracked with guilt for years. And her sister speaks about her own relationship with her parents, and the loss she felt when her grandparents died. Then, she plays the audio recordings of the three interviews back to the family members as they sit around the kitchen table and listen. What will they learn from their frank confessions as they finally open up to the camera about feelings they have kept bottled up for years? “No Crying at the Dinner Table” is a 2019 Canadian documentary short film that was directed by Carol Nguyen.