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7 films in package
Technicians
Tasked with installing self-service manicure stations at a nail salon, an automation technician meets a Vietnamese American nail tech whose job he is there to replace.
Endorphins
Kenji goes swimming, in contemplation of the past.
Everything Belongs to You
Being different or not feeling like you belong is not a foreign feeling for many Vietnamese-Germans and especially for Yen Nguyen. She is instinctively overcome with the feeling of wanting to fit in with the crowd in a small German town. Be more white, have more German friends. From her new life in Oslo - 900 km away from her family - she embarks on a journey back to her roots: Yen's journey and struggle with self-acceptance, identity and family.
Phở Succession
The Nguyen family's restaurant is struggling since the sudden death of the patriarch, an exceptional chef and Pho Master.
Broken Being: Prequel
Prequel is an introduction to the world of “Broken Being” where our characters reside, before an impending apocalypse annihilates it. In this story, a young man who lost his wife goes on an impossible journey to find Paradise, in the hope of reuniting with the love of his life. But the path he takes leads him to a devastating revelation that forces him to reevaluate his entire existence and the world around him.
Le petit panier à roulettes (The Little Shopping Trolley)
Living on a shoestring in Montreal, a Vietnamese mother must act in bad faith to assert her right to buy 12 discount laundry detergents that she's been refused at a grocery store.
Closed captions available
But Not For Me Q&A
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Broken Being: Prequel contains stylized violence and is not intended for younger audiences.


When someone is denied something – whether it was “theirs” to begin with or not – how do they respond? Do they turn their energy against others or look inward? Technicians and Phở Succession offers their answers through their Vietnamese characters’ callings. In both, the Vietnamese protagonists confront an abrupt end to their sources of financial stability – the steady work of a nail salon threatened by new technology and the death of a patriarch who was an expert chef, respectively. Between those two films are Endorphins and Everything Belongs to You, which adopt more meditative, less structured approaches, as opposed to the plot-driven scenarios of the aforementioned works. Endorphins captures the wandering thoughts of a young man swimming laps as he recovers from a breakup; Everything Belongs to You, as a cinematic essay, asserts the director’s feelings of her German and Vietnamese identities and her conflicting sense of cultural belonging. 


“But Not for Me” concludes with two films of defiance. The penultimate film, Broken Being: Prequel, is an animated science-fiction piece involving a medieval Vietnamese man reclaiming his loved one from a futuristic menace. Far less violent but just as uncompromising is The Little Shopping Trolley, which sees the matriarch of a financially-strapped Vietnamese Canadian refugee family act in bad faith in order to take advantage of a grocery store’s advertised discount. Denials, whether of an antagonistic, intangible, or material manner, provoke a response. The tension of the responses seen across this set snap into place, ripe for reflection.


By Eric Nong

Tasked with installing self-service manicure stations at a nail salon, an automation technician meets a Vietnamese American nail tech whose job he is there to replace.

  • Year
    2024
  • Runtime
    16:57
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United States
  • Director
    Kelly Luu, Kevin Luu
  • Screenwriter
    Kelly Luu, Kevin Luu
  • Producer
    Kristy Choo
  • Executive Producer
    Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, Domenica Castro, Constanza Castro, Naomi Funabashi, Travis Ing
  • Cast
    J. Alphonse Nicholson, Cathy Bui
  • Cinematographer
    Jackie Bao
  • Editor
    Lindsay Armstrong
  • Production Design
    Hanrui Wang
  • Composer
    Jon Ong