Christine Nguyen has a bearing well-suited to the leader of a
nonprofit serving Asian and Pacific Islander survivors of
domestic violence. The CEO of My Sister’s House, who has been in
her position since July 2025, has a talent for putting people at
ease, with a softly waving bob framing a calm but quickly moved
face. In a film that premiered at the Sacramento Asian Pacific Film
Festival, she revealed another side of herself — and that her
connection to the mission of My Sister’s House is not just
professional, but personal. 

Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang, right, introduces the
Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival with co-founder Jason
Jong. (Photo by Elmer Javier, courtesy of SAPFF)

The film “And Then We
Rise,” directed by Gelli Pascual with Jeff Fong and produced
by My Sister’s House and injury lawyer Anh Phoong, premiered as
the opening film of the 10th annual Sacramento Asian Pacific Film
Festival on Friday. The 22-minute documentary shares the survival
stories of two local women: Nguyen and Serena Vu, a recent
Sacramento State graduate who founded AnneitS, a nonprofit
advocating for sexual violence survivors, especially immigrants
and international students. 

City Councilmember Mai Vang, who is currently running for the
U.S. House of Representatives to represent California’s 7th
congressional district, made introductory remarks before the
film, noting that she wished the film festival had existed when
she was growing up in south Sacramento. Seeing that kind of
representation on the screen might have helped her and her
friends and family avoid “internalizing poverty” — the physical,
mental and life outcome consequences of believing one’s poverty
is a personal failing. 

Injury lawyer Anh Phoong, who co-produced “And Then We Rise” with
the nonprofit My Sister’s House, introduces the film at the SAPFF
screening. (Photo by Elmer Javier, courtesy of SAPFF)

“This is a message that needs to be seen
by the entire community,” producer Phoong said in her own
introductory speech. Phoong, well known around Northern
California for her eye-catching billboards and memorable slogan
(“Something
wrong? Call Anh Phoong”), drew enthusiastic applause. So did
Vang, whose grassroots campaign has led to her “Mai Vang for
Congress” signs being an even more frequent sight than Phoong’s
billboards around Sacramento. But the night’s biggest round of
applause was for the stars of the documentary, Nguyen and Vu, who
joined the film’s directors and Sacramento State criminal justice
professor Danielle Slakoff for a panel discussion after the
screening. 

Nguyen’s face was shiny with tears under the bright stage lights.
“I don’t think there was one minute in the whole film when I
wasn’t crying,” she said. She said that she had been carrying her
trauma for nearly 40 years but knew she had to share it for the
sake of both her children and her organization. 

“I made the decision that on the 25th anniversary of My Sister’s
House, I would share my story,” she said. “I could not be silent.
That would be betraying the mission of My Sister’s House.”

Vu, meanwhile, impeccably dressed in an ao dai borrowed from her
mother in Vietnam (so that she could attend the screening in
spirit), said she “never cries,” but that making the film
encouraged her to face emotions that she had suppressed. “The
message is, if you can survive the impossible, you can survive
anything,” she said. 

The team behind the film “And Then We Rise” pose for photos after
the screening. (Photo by Elmer Javier, courtesy of SAPFF)

The film discusses both women’s trauma — an attack in 2020 that
sent Vu into several years of guilt and depression, and five
years of continued abuse in Nguyen’s adolescence — but does not
dwell on the details. “I didn’t want to focus on ‘trauma porn’ or
exploitation,” said director Pascual. Instead, she wanted the
film to allow both women to highlight their own stories and how
they have given back to their communities. 

That story isn’t over, the film team emphasized. They put
together the 22-minute version of the film in just a few weeks in
order to meet the film festival’s deadline — which was,
generously, right before the showing. Their goal is to raise
funding for a feature-length version of the film. Information is
available at instagram.com/andthenwerisefilm.

The Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival continues through
Sunday with films shown in back-to-back blocks. Saturday’s
program includes two blocks of films centered around representation
and food
and farming, respectively, capped off by a special screening
of the 2025 film “Rosemead,”
starring Lucy Liu as a terminally ill Chinese immigrant in the
San Gabriel Valley. Sunday’s films include
short documentaries about Asian and Pacific Islander
communities around the country, ending with a feature documentary
about the Auntie
Sewing Squad, a collective formed to sew masks during the
COVID-19 pandemic that grew to provide mutual aid and resist
systemic inequality. Schedules and tickets are available at
2026.sapff.org. 

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