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GRAND JURY PRIZE - San Diego Asian Film Festival | EMERGING FILMMAKER AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY FEATURE - Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival | OFFICIAL SELECTION - IDFA
Intergenerational Trauma • Mental Health • Asian-American Identity • Family • Personal Story • China • Taiwan • Immigration • Diaspora
Date of Completion: 2024 | Run Time: 74 minutes | Language: English & Chinese (Mandarin) with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director: Vicky Du | Producers: Vicky Du & Danielle Varga | Executive Producers: Jean Tsien & Don Young | Editor: Terra Long | Cinematographers: Jih-E Peng & Daniel Chein | Composer: Troy Herion
In her deeply personal and moving directorial debut, filmmaker Vicky Du unravels her family’s war-torn history across three generations and three countries — China, Taiwan, and the United States. LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN is a poetic exploration of the unspoken, revealing how inherited trauma, insecurity, and the echoes of war shape both memory and identity. Through archival footage, personal reflections, and intimate interviews, Du crafts a candid and compassionate meditation on survival and the lasting impact of her family’s escape from the 1949 Chinese Communist Revolution.
The Moveable Fest | Stephen Saito
“Although LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN tells the story of just one family, it takes on far greater proportion when it exposes the reverberations of exile… ultimately powerful enough to likely break a cycle.”
Film Threat | Kent Hill
“Intimate, haunting and deeply human… This is documentary filmmaking at its most personal and most necessary.”
Filmmaker Magazine | Lauren Wissot
“…the inherited trauma forever looming like an unacknowledged shadow. That is until Du uses her camera to coax it into the light.”
KIOS at the Movies, NPR | Joshua LaBure
“The film is patient, intimate, and filled with pain and curiosity.”
Screen Anarchy | Peter Martin
“Rather than outrage and anger, LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN focuses on healing and understanding. It's meditative and poetic. …Wonderfully absorbing.”
Alliance of Women Film Journalists | Betsy Pickle
“The camera doesn’t judge, but there is beauty, ugliness and plainness in each setting.”
AWARDS
Grand Jury Prize | San Diego Asian Film Festival
Emerging Filmmaker Award for Documentary Feature | Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
FESTIVALS
IDFA
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
EBS International Documentary Festival
CAAMFest
Director & Producer for LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN
Vicky Du is a queer, Taiwanese-American filmmaker based in Berlin and New York. Her debut feature documentary LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN (Full Frame and IDFA, 2024) examines the intergenerational trauma within her own Chinese-Taiwanese-American family. The film received generous support from ITVS / PBS, Center for Asian American Media, Sundance Institute, Hot Docs Forum, Field of Vision, Chicken and Egg, Bay Area Video Coalition, Meerkat Media and Points North Institute. The film had its New York theatrical release at DCTV's Firehouse Cinema, and it will broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens and South Korea's EBS later in 2025 and 2026.Previously, Vicky directed and produced the Beijing episode of the nationally broadcast and Peabody award-winning series Art in the Twenty-First Century (PBS, 2020). The film follows five major contemporary artists based in Beijing, including Liu Xiaodong and Xu Bing. Vicky has also directed digital short films for Art21 that profile artists such as Rachel Rossin and Jordan Casteel.
Her first short film Gaysians (Frameline, 2016) screened at 35+ film festivals around the world, had a public television broadcast on KQED, and was distributed to 1000+ middle and high school LGBTQ student groups. From 2017-2021, Vicky was a worker-owner of Meerkat Media, a filmmaking cooperative based in Brooklyn. And prior to that, she was the Associate Producer of Free Solo (Oscar Winner, 2019). As a freelancer, Vicky has directed, produced and / or edited digital and broadcast shorts for National Geographic, The New York Times, History Channel, The New Yorker and The North Face.
Expertise
I specialize in creating very thoughtful, creative, and intimate work on Asian-American identity and mental health. I have had direct experiences of approaching my family's trauma with respect, care and curiosity. My research, direct experiences with individual and family therapy, consultation with experts and creative work all contribute to my understanding of how to deal with past and present trauma. I believe there is no experience more universal than being part of post-war diaspora in the 21st century. My hope is that the film offers students and audiences the potential to finally grieve the generational losses within their own families.
Speaking History
We had incredible audience engagement and post-screening Q&As during our New York theatrical release. We had Q&A's moderated by Jiayang Fan (staff writer at The New Yorker), Bing Liu (director of the Oscar-nominated "Minding the Gap"), Marcia Liu PhD (Psychologist and AAPI Mental Health Specialist at Hunter College), and Dr. Daniela Schiller (Neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine). Our conversations with the audience lasted well past the screening end times. The audience in particular was so interested in knowing how to engage with their Asian and Asian-American families in talking about their deeply traumatic pasts and overcoming language barriers.