Nguyen Thi Kieu Oanh

When Nguyen Thi Kieu Oanh rode her motorbike 110 km from Hanoi to the small village she featured in her film What I Love Most, she said it was “like finding paradise.” In her lyrical portrait of a place, which won a Green IS Environmental Film Award, 11-year-old Sung Thi Lan shares her love of her village, with its clear stream and rich upland fields. To make the film, journalism and communications student Oanh spent four days living with her young narrator’s family—an eye-opening experience. “There are no smartphones or televisions, but children find games that make them laugh–they jump rope, climb mountains, bathe in the stream,” she says. “It showed me that people can live in harmony with nature, and that nature will nurture them.” Oanh plans to continue channeling her concern for the environment and people into films.