Đoan Hoàng Curtis
Director/Producer
Doan Hoang Curtis after 2026 Emmy win
“Doan is a master artist. What a gift she has to create rich and meaningful work.
“Ðoan Hoàng Curtis is an extraordinary award-winning filmmaker. Her documentary OH SAIGON: A War in the Family tells the story of the last Vietnamese family to be airlifted during the fall of Saigon, in the last moments of the Vietnam War. That family happened to be her own. Though her older sister was left behind, Ðoan was on that helicopter as a three-year-old child, already deeply traumatized by a war that, for her family, has never really ended. After living in refugee camps and growing up in Kentucky, Ðoan returned to Vietnam as an adult and learned that her father had fought in the war against his own brother. Ðoan has spent her life attempting to understand and heal these wounds, to bring forth ignored voices, and her art and activism speak to that desire for deep peace and compassion.
But she is not just an artist. Ðoan hears things, she sees things, she knows things. And she is not the only person I’ve ever met who was raised in war and violence who later became a mystic. I wonder sometimes if trauma is the shattering blow that opens us, in some way, to other worlds, to other times, to voices that only we can hear.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert, best selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, Coyote Ugly and Big Magic
Đoan Hoàng Curtis (née Hoàng Niên Thục- Đoan, also known as Doan Hoang) is an award-winning director, producer, writer, and oral historian.
An Emmy winner and triple Emmy-nominated series producer for Netflix's acclaimed Turning Point: The Vietnam War (receiving 5 Emmy Award nominations in 2026)
An Emmy-winning, triple Emmy-nominated filmmaker, Hoàng Curtis served as series producer of Netflix's acclaimed Turning Point: The Vietnam War, which earned a total of five Emmy nominations — including Best Documentary, a rare feat for a series, and Best Historical Documentary — three of them for Hoàng Curtis personally. Along with two members of her team, she became one of the first Vietnamese-born filmmakers to win an Emmy. The docuseries brings new and diverse perspectives to the history of the Vietnam War, incorporating formerly classified presidential recordings and the stories of soldiers of color, civilians, women, and Vietnamese people from multiple sides of the conflict — voices often absent from earlier accounts. The series was also nominated for a IDA (International Documentary Association) Award for Best Episodic Series.
Đoan first gained recognition with her PBS documentary Oh, Saigon: A War in the Family, chronicling her family's dramatic escape — she was a child on the last helicopter to take civilians from the airport during the Fall of Saigon — and her later discovery that her father and uncles had fought on opposing sides of the conflict.
Đoan is currently directing and producing Oh, America: 1975, exploring the post-war lives of survivors of the Fall of Saigon. She also made The Longest Walk, focusing on abortion laws and rape survivors. Her films have garnered prestigious awards and support from the Firelight Media Spark Fund/National Endowment for the Humanities, Sundance Institute, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), LA Asian Pacific Film Festival (Grand Jury Prize – Best Documentary), Brooklyn Arts Council International Film Festival (Best Documentary,Best Brooklyn Film), Austin Film Festival (Best of the Fest), and the Asian Women's Giving Fund/Ms. Foundation, among others.
In late 2025, Đoan received a Best Creative Documentary Filmmaker Award at the Global Peace & Legacy Awards, given by a hero from her teen years, author Le Ly Hayslip.
Đoan's work has been exhibited on five continents, featured in international institutes and museum exhibitions and festivals, and featured, streamed, or broadcasted on major platforms including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu,PBS, cable, video on demand, and the Criterion Channel andinternational platforms such as BBC, SBS Australia, EITB Spain,URSweden/Scandinavia, HTV Vietnam, Al-Jazeera English . She has also represented the United States as a traveling artist for the U.S. Department of State in Vietnam and Spain with American Documentary Showcase. A survivor of war who was airlifted from Saigon at age three, Đoan brings unique insight and compassion to stories showing the effects of war, trauma, politics, and division on families, veterans, and civilians.
SeeMORE, her full CV.
Listen to the BBC World Service show about Đoan, October 2025. See Vietnamese podcast interviews above.
About Đoan Hoàng Curtis
LONG BIO
Đoan Hoàng Curtis (née Hoàng Niên Thục-Đoan, also known as Doan Hoang) was born in the former Republic of (South) Vietnam to a South Vietnamese Air Force major from Saigon and a Mekong Delta socialite. Airlifted from Saigon during its fall in April 1975 at just three years old, Đoan was raised in Kentucky where her interest in documenting her family's war experience emerged early—writing her first book about their escape at the Fall of Saigon at age 9, creating her first war documentary at 12, and beginning oral history work on her family at 13.
After graduating from Smith College in the mid-1990s, Đoan established herself in New York City's publishing world as an editor, writer, and fact-checker for prominent national magazines including Details, House & Garden, Spin, Travel & Leisure, and Saveur. During this period, she continued her Vietnam War oral history work while also performing as singer and guitarist in the riot grrrl band, Cheryl Tiegs and collaborating with Copenhagen-based avant-garde musician J. Graf.
In 1996, Đoan was interviewed for V's (formerly Eve Ensler's) "The Vagina Monologues," becoming a subject in the play. By 1998, she joined V/Ensler as an early co-founding board member of VDay, a non-profit that has raised over $120 million for anti-violence organizations worldwide. Đoan was actively involved with art organizations, feminist, activist and meditation groups.
Her breakthrough documentary "Oh, Saigon: A War in the Family" began production in 1999 in London where Doan lived. In 1998, Đoan had met cinematographer and associate producer of Oh, Saigon, Ham Tran. John Battsek of Passion Pictures, the Oscar and Emmy-winning producer became executive producer along with Julie Goldman, and Frank Campbell. Su Kim was added as associate producer to the project, Bret Sigler was editor. Composers Juan Buccella and Malcolm Cross did the score, and music featured the band, Parlour. Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis sent a song for the film’s use. The seven-year project received funding from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, the Center for Asian American Media, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The documentary won the Grand Jury Prize for Non-Fiction Feature Film at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and Best Feature Documentary & Best Brooklyn Film at the 42nd Brooklyn Arts Council International Film Festival.
Oh, Saigon’s premiered at the San Francisco International Asian Film Festival in 2007. Its New York premier was at the Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) Documentary Fortnight Exhibition to a sold-out, standing-room-only crowd, where curator William Sloan called the film "truly strong, human and brave." In London, the film opened at the Trocadero. Đoan was later featured in Minneapolis's Weisman Art Museum's 2009 exhibition "Changing Identities: Recent Work of Women Artists from Vietnam." The film has been translated into seven languages, had seven national airings on PBS, and streamed on major platforms including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and international outlets and channels.
From 2010-2012, Đoan toured Spain and Vietnam with "Oh, Saigon" as a featured artist for the US Department of State. Her work has been featured on international media outlets including BBC World Service, NPR, and EiTB in Spain. Oh, Saigon is taught in university courses worldwide, including classes led by Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen at USC and Vietnam War scholar Marilyn B. Young at NYU.
Đoan's additional directing and producing credits include "Agent," "American Geisha," "Legacy of Denial,” “Good Morning Captains," "Hard Times," "Nuoc," "On the Trail of Ho," and "A Requiem." She has directed music videos and commercials while consulting on numerous award-winning documentaries, including Oscar-nominated "If A Tree Falls," and "Nailed It."
In 2022, Đoan received the Firelight Media/National Endowment for the Humanities' Spark Fund supporting her work on "Oh America: Divided Country," exploring her family's second-generation political split—out of three child survivors of the Fall of Saigon, one became liberal while two marched on the US Capitol on January 6. Đoan has been conducting an extensive oral history project around the Fall of Saigon, involving both Vietnamese and American survivors, including the veterans who rescued her family.
In 2024-2025, Đoan is series producer on the 5-part Emmy-nominated Netflix series Turning Point on its Vietnam War series, released April 30, 2025, the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Đoan is making Oh, America, a follow-up to Oh, Saigon. Đoan directed, produced, and appeared in The Longest Walk (2024), a documentary short that takes place in Kentucky, part of a series by the Abortion Clinic Film Collective, shorts about abortion taking place in the states that have banned abortion.
In late 2025, Đoan received a Best Creative Documentary Filmmaker Award at the Global Peace & Legacy Awards, given by a hero from her teen years, author Le Ly Hayslip. The Netflix Turning Point series received a second Emmy nomination, and she and her team on Turning Point: The Vietnam War were nominated for Best Episodic Series at the International Documentary Association IDA Awards.
BBC World Service show about Đoan, October 2025
Đoan identifies neurodiverse, female and non-binary, and part of the LGBTQIA community. Đoan has been happily married to composer and Philip Curtis with whom she collaborated on Oh, America and Scars for Eyes.
For more