Richard Van is a California-based filmmaker of Vietnamese descent. One of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, his films explore issues of identity, masculinity, and family.

He holds an MFA in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts as well as a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley and is currently serving on the board of directors for the Southeast Asian Development Center in San Francisco.

Audition, his short film about an aspiring actress and her 3-year-old son, won first prize at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and played at LA Film Festival and Slamdance.

His CalArts thesis film HIẾU, a comedy-drama about a dysfunctional Vietnamese-American family and the return of their oddball patriarch, premiered at the 2019 Festival de Cannes for its Cinéfondation Selection where it won Deuxième Prix.

He is currently developing his first feature-length film titled Uncle Hiep’s Casino about a Vietnamese-American ex-con who finds work at his uncle’s illegal casino. The project received SFFilm’s Rainin Grant and participated in Film Independent’s Screenwriting Lab and Fast Track Film Finance Market.