About Vu Pham

Vu Pham is a Portland-based writer, director, producer, and actor. A refugee from Vietnam, his work has been deeply influenced by personal and historical trauma, existential philosophy, and the transitory nature of life on the fringes. He has received grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, and his films have been exhibited by the NW Film Center, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, and national film festivals.

His work and story have been featured on OPB’s Oregon Art Beat and in other Portland press. In 2019, he was shortlisted for the Sundance Institute’s Asian American Feature Film Fellowship.

As an actor, he has had the honor of working alongside Harrison Ford, Jonathan Groff, and Corey Stoll. Most recently, he was the screenwriter and story producer of Pour the Water as I Leave, an animated hybrid documentary by Daniela Repas. The project was spotlighted at the 2021 and 2022 Marché du Film.

Sea Rose Ashes is his first documentary and his most personal work. It came as a clash of personal and historical conditions. While grappling with unbearable heartbreak, the reemergence of trauma from his mother’s violent murder during childhood, and the crumbling world during the pandemic, Vu found his way to the beginning of this story while stranded in Juneau, Alaska in 2020.