Cindy Lee is a Korean American writer, filmmaker, storyteller. In 2023, she directed and produced her first short documentary, The Stories They Didn’t Tell Us – Nina’s Story, about the stories a refugee Vietnamese American mother didn’t tell her three American-born children, with their separate interviews and perspectives.
In April 2024, Cindy won the Arizona Filmmaker of the Year Award at the Phoenix Film Festival. In 2024, Nina’s Story won Best Documentary Short at the Chicago Indie Film Awards and Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary Short Film at the Lowell Asian American Film Festival.
In Fall 2023, Cindy graduated from Arizona State University (ASU) with a Master of Liberal Studies (Film and Media Studies) degree, with Distinction. During her time at ASU, she published two essays that express her Korean American voice. “Am I a Conditional American?” shares her reflections after experiencing an encounter at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, published in Transformations. Her other essay, “It’s Code,” published in Superstition Review, explores the code inherent in her Korean American family’s communications.