Our Team
Vicky Du (Director and Producer)
Vicky Du is a queer, Taiwanese-American filmmaker based in Berlin and New York. Her debut feature documentary Light of the Setting Sun (Full Frame and IDFA, 2024) examines the intergenerational trauma within her own Chinese-Taiwanese-American family. The film has received generous support from ITVS / PBS, Center for Asian American Media, Sundance Institute, Hot Docs Forum, Field of Vision, Chicken and Egg, Bay Area Video Coalition, Meerkat Media and Points North Institute. The film will broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens and South Korea's EBS in 2025. Previously, she directed and produced the Beijing episode of the nationally broadcast series Art in the Twenty-First Century (PBS, 2020). From 2017-2021, Vicky was a worker-owner of Meerkat Media, a filmmaking cooperative based in Brooklyn. She has participated in The Flaherty Film Seminar (2019) and INTRO:DOX (2023), and her work has received fellowships from BAVC, CAAM and Points North Institute.
Danielle Varga (Producer)
Danielle Varga is an independent nonfiction producer who has been working in nonfiction film for the past decade. She most recently produced an episode for the PBS Peabody Award-winning series Art in the Twenty-First Century titled Bodies of Knowledge, and co-produced the feature documentary The Stroll (Sundance 2023, HBO). Varga produced Bulletproof (SXSW 2020) and the critically acclaimed documentary The Hottest August (True/False 2019). She co-produced the award-winning and Oscar shortlisted film Cameraperson (Sundance 2016). Varga was listed on DOC NYC’s inaugural list of “40 Under 40” filmmakers to watch, and was a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. She produces films under her production company, Walking Productions, and through collaborations with other filmmakers and production companies making bold and singular work.
Terra Long (Editor)
Terra Long is a filmmaker and editor, her work has shown widely in festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival, CPH:DOX, Rotterdam, and IDFA among others. Her first feature film Feet in Water, Head on Fire, premiered at True/False and is currently circulating. She frequently collaborates as lead editor on award winning documentary films including Going to Mars: the Nikki Giovanni Project (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2023) Landfall (Viewfinders Grand Jury Award DOCNYC, 2020), and regularly acts as editing consultant, The Tuba Thieves (Sundance 2023). This year, she was a Story and Edit Lab advisor with the Sundance Institute. She studied at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University and received her MFA in film from York University. She lives and works on the traditional territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw in the Canadian province of British Columbia.
Jean Tsien (Executive Producer)
Jean Tsien has been working in documentaries for 40 years as an editor, producer and consultant. Jean was the executive producer and editor for Plastic China, the winner of the 54th Golden Horse Award for Best Editing. She executive produced People’s Republic of Desire (Grand Jury Award SXSW 2018) In 2021, Jean received two Peabody Awards: one for executive producing the five-part PBS series Asian Americans; and one for producing 76 Days, winner of the Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Jean was the editor and producer for Free Cool Too Lee (Sundance Film Festival 2022). As a mentor and field builder, Jean is a recipient of 2018 Art of Editing Mentorship Award from Sundance Institute; Lifetime Achievement Award presented at DOC NYC’s 2020 Visionaries Tribute, and 2021 IDA Pioneer Award. Jean is a 2024 Academy Award nominee for Island In Between, a short documentary which she produced.
Jih-E Peng (Cinematographer)
Jih-E Peng is a Taiwanese filmmaker and photographer based in the United States. Select cinematography credits include Girls Will Be Girls (Sundance Film Festival), The Light and the Little Girl (Toronto International Film Festival, BAM, BFI Future Film, Short of the Week), A Period Piece (SXSW), and Honolulu (AFI Fest, Aspen ShortsFest, Palm Springs ShortsFest). Nonfiction credits include Light of the Setting Sun (Full Frame), Jeanette Lee Vs. (ESPN 30 for 30), and New York Times documentary I Just Simply Did What He Wanted (front page of the Times 2018, 2019 Emmy nominee, 2019 Winner of a World Press Photo Award). She has taught cinematography and visual storytelling, both in special workshops and at the MFA level. She graduated from the American Film Institute's MFA program in cinematography and is a member of the ICFC, Sporas, A-Doc, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
Daniel Chein (Cinematographer)
Daniel Chein is an independent filmmaker and cinematographer whose work explores transculturalism and expressions of identity in the performative. His latest short ABOUT A HOME premiered at the 2021 Slamdance Film Festival and is distributed by Argo. His previous short film Basha Man premiered at CAAMFest2017, where it won the AT&T Film Award. His forthcoming short film In Four Movements profiles a dancer for the internationally renowned Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch confronting traumatic silence within his family. His work has screened at dozens of festivals including Ann Arbor Film Festival, Cinequest, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, and Champs-Élysées Film Festival, to name a few. As a lecturer, Daniel has taught courses on cinematography, editing, and documentary filmmaking. He received a BA in Anthropology and an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University.
Troy Herion (Composer)
Troy Herion is an Emmy-winning and Cinema Eye nominated composer, editor, and producer whose scoring has garnered critical acclaim for films like 306 Hollywood, The Hottest August, and Bulletproof. With a unique approach that blends melodic elegance with unconventional orchestration, his music cannot be easily classified into any genre. He believes in the power of "sonic storytelling" where music transcends its conventional role as mere background and becomes a storyteller in its own right. Recently Herion's music has been prominently featured in the Oscar-nominated Fire of Love and the Sundance award-winning I Didn't See You There. He has also premiered projects at major film festivals such as Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, CPH Docs, SXSW, HotDocs, Tribeca, MoMA, NYFF, and True/False.
Light of the Setting Sun is produced by Setting Sun Productions and Walking Productions, co-produced with ITVS and CAAM, in association with PBS for Independent Lens, and with support from Sundance, Field of Vision, Chicken & Egg, Hot Docs, BAVC and Meerkat Media.