COREY CAO NGUYEN is an Emmy Nominated Vietnamese American Cinematographer based in Los Angeles/Orange County. Nguyen prides himself on placing the story above all in his work and emphasizes in a naturalistic style that truthfully depicts characters in their world and builds empathy and emotion through light.

This approach led Nguyen toward documentary work in his early career. FRAT HOUSE (2018 Dir. Nancy Nguyen), a film about the last gay bar in a homophobic town, and WITHIN THEIR GATES (2019 Dir. Matthew Goriachkovsky), a film about a survivor’s narration of his time at the Japanese American Internment camps, were early projects that pushed Nguyen to prioritize stories that centered the voices of the marginalized and oppressed.

From there, Nguyen began to work internationally and directed and shot educational ecological documentaries all across the world. Working with rural students in the countryside of Paraguay to sites of anti-colonial activism in South Africa, Nguyen gained a cosmopolitan perspective as both an artist and person.

Now, Nguyen has shifted his focus toward narrative and commercial projects, but still focused on marginalized voices. Working on projects such as Hulu’s Black Girl Magic, A24’s feature All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Amazon’s Girls in STEM docu-series, and PBS’s Asian American Stories of Resilience, Nguyen has emerged as one of the top rising cinematographers of his generation and was named as a 2023 Emerging Artist by the California Art’s Council. 

When not on-set, Nguyen works to draw attention to injustice and systemic racism. He’s a show host for the progressive OUR SMALL MAJORITY podcast in which he directs and produces DO YOU KNOW, an audio storytelling episodic series that recreates and explains moments of anti-blackness that have gone untaught and ignored in American history.