Toronto-born director delves into her uncle’s mysterious death in film at TIFF
Published September 17, 2026 at 11:41 am
Note: This story contains discussions of suicide.
A Toronto-born director delves into her uncle’s mysterious death in a deeply personal film at TIFF.
Now based in Montreal, director Carol Nguyen’s Still Night, Burning House premiered at the festival on the weekend with a final showing on Friday.
The documentary chronicles her family’s first gathering since her uncle’s mysterious death over a decade ago, and is Nguyen’s first feature-length film.
“I’m so so grateful and honoured for the film to have been selected at TIFF in particular because I was born and raised in Toronto,” Nguyen told YourCityWithIN.com.
While she was in high school in Toronto, she participated in a TIFF program called Jump Cuts, a youth film competition.
“So it feels full circle in a way because, not only can my whole family be there in attendance to be a part of this moment, but it’s my hometown,” she said.
Nguyen’s short film Nanitic (2022) was screened at the Berlinale and TIFF. No Crying at the Dinner Table (2019) was shown at TIFF, IDFA and South by Southwest, where it won the Jury Prize for Short Documentary.
Still Night, Burning House delves into a personal family story.
“I am nervous for the world to witness this vulnerability,” she said.
Director Carol Nguyen’s first feature film, Still Night, Burning House, premiered at TIFF. Photo courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada
Nguyen said she wanted to explore this topic, and then her father spoke about his guilt around his brother’s death for the first time in No Crying at the Dinner Table.
“That was also when I learned about his (her uncle’s) mental illness, which was a big discovery, and that started my research,” she said.
After her Uncle Thach died in 2007, when Nguyen was nine years old, the family stopped talking. Once close with her cousins, they didn’t have contact after the death.
She was young, but she remembered the night he died.
“We heard stories that he had hallucinations that night, but didn’t know why. And there were always questions,” she said.
The film became a point of reconciliation for her paternal family. Nguyen started to ask family members about her uncle’s life. In the film, Nguyen guides her cousins and aunt as they navigate unsealed medical records and learn more about Thach’s mental health.
Nguyen describes the film as experimental, and at certain points it veers away from her uncle’s story and talks about grief in general.
“Slowly I found this idea was bigger than just personal curiosity in itself, and that there was a story to tell here beyond my uncle’s story as well,” she said.
When there’s a death involving mental illness and unanswered questions, it is quite hard to find closure, she said.
In the film, the family travelled to Vietnam, which gave them a chance to bond, share stories and rediscover what it means to be Vietnamese.
“Vietnam is also the place my uncle was before his schizophrenia started so it was a wonderful experience, very emotional,” she said.
The film explores the world of Vietnamese death rituals. Nguyen said they had a wonderful fixer who helped them find flexibility in filming. One of the elements they wanted in the film was a Vietnamese funeral.
“There are so many things you cannot plan when you want to film a funeral,” she said. “You cannot plan when someone dies. So there was a lot of listening in the moment, picking up and going, seeing what’s happening, seeing what interests my family, and then following them.”
The film explores Vietnamese death rituals. Photo courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada
This was a departure from Nguyen’s short films, which tended to be planned out.
“I had to lean into more traditional documentary strategies and ways of storytelling, which really liberated the story and me as a filmmaker,” she said. ” Oftentimes life writes a better story than what you can write yourself. So I learned a lot from that.”
She said the film is a love letter to her father.
“I watched my dad grieving for a decade, and I didn’t know how to ask, and I didn’t know what was going on as well,” she said.
Her father saw the film before the festival and approved.
“He looked over at me, and he said, ‘Wow, Carol, I think it’s good. And that was an hour, and you know, however many minutes. It felt fast. Like time passed in the blink of an eye.’ And that was enough for me,” she said.
Still Night, Burning House is a Metafilms, National Film Board of Canada and Portage Films co-production. It has its final festival showing on Friday, Sept. 18. It will have theatrical engagement next year and will later be available for streaming.
Lead photo courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada