Thien Dinh
Thien Dinh (they/them) is a cultural worker, Vietnamese immigrant, artist, and award-winning filmmaker based in Philadelphia. They have spent over a decade in immigrant and labor organizing, working alongside communities to help people tell their own stories. In recent years, they have stepped behind the camera, bringing together a deep love of history and a commitment to justice-forward storytelling. Their films explore race, class, and migration, centering the unrelenting humanity of everyday people. Thien is a 2025 Brown Girls Doc Mafia (BGDM) Sustainable Artist Fellow. Their short documentary film “FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD” won “Best Film from the Frontlines” at the 2025 Workers Unite Film Festival. They illustrated Taking Root (premiered at Tribeca in 2023) and continue to contribute to media for social justice campaigns. AMERICAN WORKER is Thien Dinh’s feature documentary debut.
Presentations from Facing Race 2026
America sold the U.S. public a poster: the “American Worker.” The American Worker belongs here. He is patriotic and free. He is white and male. He built the nation, so the nation belongs to him. This film tears the myth open. In the wreckage of decades of mythmaking, an AAPI immigrant filmmaker embarks on a journey across time and geography to uncover how race, labor, and power have shaped belonging and exclusion in America’s story of work.
Directed by Thien Dinh, Produced by John Beder and Anthony Banua-Simon