Diana Cam Van Nguyen is moving from award-winning animated shorts to her first feature with Inbetween Worlds, a Czech-led international co-production that explores family expectations, cultural identity and the difficult choices that can arise between personal happiness and responsibility.
The film follows Mai, a 23-year-old Vietnamese-Czech photography student in Prague whose parents run a Vietnamese restaurant. When the family falls into financial difficulties, Mai is pressured into an arranged marriage with Tuan, a family acquaintance from Vietnam, setting her on a path that forces her to reconsider her relationship with her family, her partner and herself.
Nguyen has drawn on personal experience for the project, though she emphasizes that Inbetween Worlds is not autobiographical. In a recent interview with Forbes Czechia, she said the film grew partly from an actual marriage proposal she received at age 22, when she was asked to marry a man from Vietnam to help him move to the Czech Republic.
A hybrid feature built from animation and live action
Inbetween Worlds marks a significant formal shift for Nguyen, who studied at Prague’s FAMU and established her reputation through short films including The Little One, Apart, and Love, Dad. The latter won a Czech Lion and the Czech Film Critics’ Award and received international festival exposure, including a screening at The New Yorker festival, as well as a European Film Award nomination for Nguyen.
For her feature debut, she is combining conventional live-action filmmaking with collage animation. According to the project materials, approximately 30% of the film will use animation, which is intended to represent Mai’s internal world rather than simply provide a visual counterpoint to the live-action scenes.
That approach was already visible during production. Forbes reported from the set of a wedding-hall sequence in August that members of the crew were filming wedding guests against a green screen, creating material that will later be incorporated into animated collage sequences. The hybrid technique allows the filmmakers to depict fears, guilt and emotions that Mai cannot easily express through dialogue.
The project has also developed through a lengthy international process. Producer Karolína Davidová said that the film went through several years of development, international pitching, residencies, partner searches and financing. Its development included KVIFF Talents, FEST New Directors/New Films Lab, La Résidence at the Cannes Film Festival, EAVE Ties That Bind, CineMart in Rotterdam, Berlinale Talents-Script Station and the Gotham Project Market.
The completed production is a four-country co-production between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France and Singapore. Filming took place in both the Czech Republic and Vietnam, with Vi Tran starring as Mai alongside David Petrželka, Lâm Thanh Nha, Linh Dan Pham and Long Pham Tien. Czech cast members include Klára Trojanová, Lucie Žáčková and Igor Chmela.
From personal experience to a broader family story
The central premise of Inbetween Worlds has a direct connection to Nguyen’s own life. At 22, she was approached by friends of her parents about marrying a young Vietnamese man and helping him immigrate to the Czech Republic. She considered the proposal but ultimately declined.
In the Forbes interview, Nguyen stressed that the film does not reproduce that experience directly. “Inbetween Worlds is not autobiographical and Mai is not my film alter ego,” she said, explaining that she also drew on the experiences of people around her.
The film instead uses the arranged-marriage premise to examine a wider conflict between individual aspirations and family obligations. Mai agrees to the marriage partly because of guilt and a desire to help her parents save their restaurant. After secretly marrying Tuan in Vietnam, she returns to Prague and must confront the consequences for her relationship with her boyfriend Daniel, while Tuan eventually moves in as the marriage comes under scrutiny.
For Nguyen, the marriage itself is less important than the questions underneath it. “Under the striking plot situation, what is more important to me is the question of what we are willing to do for other people, what the family expects and what love can look like when it is not expressed in the way we are used to,” she told Forbes.
The themes continue Nguyen’s interest in difficult communication between parents and children. Love, Dad centered on her relationship with her father and the ways love can be difficult to express across generations. Inbetween Worlds revisits those dynamics from a different perspective, placing a daughter’s decision about her own future against the sacrifices and expectations of her family.
The director also sees her Vietnamese heritage as one part of a more complex identity. In the Forbes interview, she described becoming more interested in Vietnamese history and culture as an adult and gradually recognizing her background as “one of the layers” shaping how she views the world and her characters.
The film is currently scheduled for completion in June 2027. Its production represents the latest stage in Nguyen’s transition from acclaimed personal short-form animation to larger-scale feature filmmaking, while retaining the combination of documentary influence, animation and lived experience that has defined her work to date.
