‘Normal Girl’

In NORMAL GIRL, I consider normality as a contradictory concept, one which restricts more than it comforts. I drew from my own experience in navigating cultural identity, as well as my mother’s retold experience of arriving in Australia as a Vietnamese refugee.

This short film explores the difficulty of moving between different cultures and grapples with the concept of unnerving self-perception. The protagonist (Khanh) faces guilt and inept ability to conform within ‘defined’ cultures (Asian or Anglocentric), eventually being confronted with the most daunting truth of all: her ‘abnormality’ can never be erased.