- Feb 10
- 3 min read
Written by Serica contributor, Lana Trinh, compiled by Nithya Kumar
Fred Le is a Vietnamese American comedian and filmmaker whose work sits at the intersection of humor, identity, and lived experience. After years of performing stand-up and producing live shows rooted in diaspora culture, Le turned to documentary filmmaking with The Empathizer, a project that began as a small, comedic experiment and slowly grew into a feature-length exploration of what it means to return to a place you were raised to imagine.
Fred Le didn’t set out to make a feature-length documentary. What began as something loose and observational gradually became more complicated.
“I remember specifically being in the car after one shoot,” Le said. “We were all tired, and we were just like, yeah… this is actually going to be pretty long.”
Shot primarily in Vietnam, The Empathizer follows a group of overseas-born Vietnamese navigating questions of identity, belonging, and return. The film centers conversations with expats and second-generation Vietnamese Americans—people who move through the country with curiosity, privilege, distance, and familiarity.
Originally, Le imagined the project as a short. “We thought every interview would be like an hour,” he said. “We’d just pull the funniest clips and move on.” Instead, the conversations deepened. “When you lock Vietnamese immigrants in a room together,” he added, “there’s going to be some heavy stuff that comes out.”
By the time filming wrapped, Le had accumulated more than 20 hours of footage. When he and his editor finally sat down to watch everything through, the scale of the project became clear. “They watched everything with me for three days,” Le said. “And then I was like, no—there’s a feature in here.”
Rather than forcing a structure, the documentary grew out of listening. Many of the people Le interviews speak candidly about what it feels like to return to a place they were taught to imagine, but not fully inhabit. “When you go to Vietnam as somebody who’s never been there before,” Le said, “but who’s always been told about it, there are a couple of waves.”
The first wave is excitement. “You feel so privileged,” he said. “Everything’s cheap, everyone’s paying attention to you. You think, wow, I’m really living the best life.”
That feeling doesn’t last. “Eventually you realize,” Le said, “you’re only seeing the front yard.” The film doesn’t rush that realization, instead allowing contradictions to surface naturally.
Language plays a role in The Empathizer. The film is entirely in English, a choice Le made early on. “I wanted to explore specifically this Viet Kieu identity,” he said, referring to overseas-born Vietnamese. “A lot of people in the film don’t even speak Vietnamese. And I thought that was fascinating.”
Rather than treating that distance as a deficit, the film leans into it. Small moments of awkwardness and humor—like a scene where Le struggles to communicate while doing laundry—reflect the experience of being visibly connected to a place without fully belonging to it. “The woman clocks me immediately as someone who doesn’t speak Vietnamese,” Le said, laughing.
Midway through the process, Le realized the documentary was still unfinished—not because of missing footage, but because of a missing voice. “We looked at each other and said, this movie is not done,” he recalled. “It wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t hear from the person I’d been talking about for so long.” That decision led to another round of filming, and what Le describes as the film’s final act.
“What is fair in documentary filmmaking?” he asked. “I don’t know. But we knew we weren’t done listening.”
Since its completion, The Empathizer has been accompanied by extended Q&As and conversations, where audiences connect over shared experiences and questions raised by the film.
While Le comes from a background in comedy—he previously co-created Embarrassed by Night, a live show rooted in Vietnamese diaspora culture—this project asked something different of him. “I’ve always been fascinated by people who leave,” he said. “Expats in general. I was one too.”
That curiosity remains. Le is already thinking about future projects, including one that explores Western expats in Southeast Asia through a more overtly comedic lens. “There’s a term people use—‘Loser Back Home,’” he said. “There’s definitely comedy to be mined there.”
For now, The Empathizer stands as a documentary formed by conversations. “We got really lucky,” Le said. “The material was just… rich.” For Le, the work continues through listening and the discussions it opens.
You can learn more about the film which is going out to festivals and screenings
all over the US now by clicking below!
