More than a decade after her uncle’s mysterious death, Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker Carol Nguyen gathers her family for a trip to Vietnam. In Still Night, Burning House, the journey becomes a return to what was never fully spoken. The family moves through unsealed medical records, old questions, collective rituals, and private attempts to understand a loss that has lived too long without shape. At the centre is Nguyen’s father, still carrying guilt and searching for an answer that keeps slipping into stranger territory.
A world premiere at TIFF Docs, Nguyen’s feature debut expands the emotional terrain of her award-winning short No Crying at the Dinner Table (2019). Not concerned only with discovering what happened, Nguyen’s film explores what silence has done to her family across time and distance, carefully letting grief surface through conversation, ritual, and memory. Still Night, Burning House is about delayed mourning and the possibility of moving forward as a family after years of not knowing how to begin.
Oct 6 & 7: Filmmaker Q&A
Presented by
Media Partner
Community Partner
Ngoc Nguyen, Jennifer Nguyen, Phán Huê Tang, Jenny Tang, Hoàng Nguyen, Thao Nguyen-Dương
Canada
2026
In English and Vietnamese with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Sylvain Corbeil, Nathalie Cloutier, Bob Moore, Anh-Duy Vo-Dinh
Producer
Audrey-Ann Dupuis-Pierre, Rob Vroom, Ariel Nasr
Screenwriter
Carol Nguyen
Cinematography
Juliette Lossky
Editor
Anouk Deschênes
Original Music
Arie Verheul Van De Ven
Carol Nguyen
Carol Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal whose films explore themes of cultural identity, family, and silence. Her short film Nanitic (2022) screened at the Berlinale and TIFF. No Crying at the Dinner Table (2019) was shown at TIFF, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and South by Southwest, where it won the Jury Prize for Short Documentary. Carol is currently working on several projects, including a feature-length fiction selected for TIFF Writer’s Studio in 2025.
Photo by Romain Rabasa
Northern Lights
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