Professor Brunner-Sung discusses her deeply collaborative film
Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, #NUSoC!
Department of Radio/Television/Film Professor Vera Brunner-Sung is a writer and director who often edits her own projects. She works across experimental, narrative, and documentary film to explore American identity and belonging.
Brunner-Sung has screened her work at Sundance, MoMA PS1, CPH:DOX, Images Festival, Torino, San Francisco International, the Whitney Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, and others.
She joined the Northwestern faculty last fall and calls her transition into the School and department inspiring.
“I’m working on a new script and it’s doing what I love: experimenting with fresh, personal ways of bringing fiction and documentary together,” Brunner-Sung says.
Her favorite part of her creative process is the exploratory phase.
“I’d say it often starts with an image in my mind, and I use the writing process to investigate and expand it,” she says. “The trick is to balance outside research with intuitive connections.”
When asked about Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and what it means in the context of her work, she references her latest feature film BITTERROOT which was shown at the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media’s Asian American Showcase at the Siskel Film Center from May 16–22.
“My new film BITTERROOT is a really special project,” she says. “It’s set in a Hmong American community in Montana and the process of making the film was deeply collaborative and community-centered.”
BITTERROOT (Nonetheless/Spark Features/Louverture Films) premiered in the 2024 U.S. Narrative Competition at Tribeca and was nominated for Best U.S. Narrative Feature and won best Cinematography in a U.S. Feature.
“AAPI Heritage Month—as well as the 50th anniversary this year of Southeast Asians in the U.S.—is an opportunity to honor and uplift our film and all the talent behind it,” she says. “And we’ll continue to carry this positive energy forward into the rest of the year.”