In the midst of these difficult, scary, and emotionally devastating times, writer-director Oanh-Nhi Nguyen has two short films which screened at HollyShorts Film Festival this week. Though short in runtime, both films pack emotional punches, focusing on the experience of immigrants. In The Stand and Little Bird, our leads hustle and fight to get by in a country that seems to stack the odds ever-increasingly against them.
The Stand
Quinn (Jovie Leigh) just got selected to perform a solo in the school choir. She’s looking forward to it, and is excited to tell her mom (Nicole Santiago) about the concert, which is that weekend. As she and her brother Liam (Kailen Jude) meet their mother at the food stand she runs on the city sidewalk, her excitement is quickly deflated. Her concert being on a weekend night, Mom is reluctant to close the stand, as they’ll lose out on money they need. Quinn suggests advertising the stand on social media, and gets her mom to agree that if they can make enough money in the next two days, she’ll close the stand to attend the concert.
Just then, they get a call that her mom’s child support hearing with their father has been pushed up and she has to leave. Trying to close the stand and waste all the food, Quinn insists she can run the stand, along with keeping an eye on Liam, so they can meet their sales goal. Eventually, Mom agrees, leaving a teenage girl and her kid brother to navigate the dynamics of city life on their own, for better or worse.
Co-written by Nguyen with Corey Pinchoff, The Stand looks at not just the struggles of immigrants, but that of their families and how even the youngest need to grow up quickly to help them all get by. Along with Nguyen’s direction, cinematographer Ed Wu utilizes handheld techniques and closeups to enhance the intimacy with these characters. We feel like we’re out there, on the streets, with them, and we empathize with their plight as they interact with the community around them. Jovie Leigh is very convincing as Quinn, her determination to succeed evident in every expression, and she and Kailen Jude authentically portray the bickering sibling dynamic quite well.
Little Bird
Los Angeles, 1980. Linh Tran (Chantal Thuy) has one of the least enviable jobs of this or perhaps any time period: Serving apartment tenants with final eviction notices. This is not a job she enjoys, but nonetheless she carries it out with a cold, unflinching professionalism. Inside and outside the apartment complex, trash is scattered in the hallways and on the payment, with every wall covered in graffiti. Along her route, she encounters some Vietnamese children playing in the hallway and asks about their parents. One girl, Thuy (Jolie Eden, in her debut performance), is surprised to learn that Linh is also Vietnamese and innocently leads her to see her uncle, as her parents are gone.
Upon entering Thuy’s apartment, Linh discovers that she’s living with many family members, both young and old. The uncle (Paul Yen) happily welcomes her in, thinking she’s one of the housing organizers that has been logging complaints and repairs throughout the complex to take to the landlord. In short fashion, Linh finds herself torn between performing her job, and further uprooting a family who has overcome much adversity to arrive in L.A., which also reminds her of her own upbringing.
Based on the true story of housing organizer Debbie Wei and inspired by Nguyen’s own work with her docuseries Taking Root, Little Bird is a poignant reflection of not only struggling immigrant families of the 1980s, but also of today as well as all people enduring predatory slumlords and multi-family living just to survive. Not only does Chantal Thuy deliver a striking performance in the role of jaded worker turned passionate advocate, but her scenes with Eden shine, with the latter’s naïve optimism about the former’s presence melting even the most frozen hearts. Co-written with Ysabeaux Ng, and with a touching score from Salil Bhayani, this short, along with The Stand, are touching portraits of immigrant life in America, the optimism of which can hopefully translate to off-screen change in the future.
Both The Stand and Little Bird screened at HollyShorts Film Festival 2025, With The Stand premiering on Hulu this winter.
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