The Vietnamese International Film Festival hits the big screen over the next two weekends, debuting tonight with a screening of ''Footy Legends,'' a feature film by Vietnamese Australian Khoa Đỗ. It’s the tale of a war-torn family finding redemption through rugby.

Tough sport, rugby. Tough business, filmmaking.

But Đỗ has immersed himself in it, quickly forging a reputation as an emerging star in the field. Đỗ shared with Kỳ-Phong Paul Trần his ideas about filmmaking,

Q: You immigrated to Australia in 1980. What was that experience like? How old were you and how much do you remember?

A: I was just under 2 years old. The experience was quite a journey. We left Việt Nam on a boat with 40 other people, and I was the youngest. On our trip, we had engine failure, pirate attacks and hunger. Fortunately, we made it to Malaysia.

Q: What is your family like? Aside from your brother, Ánh, do you have other siblings?

A: My family is a very close-knit family. I have a younger sister, Trâm, who currently works a wedding photographer here in Sydney. Somehow, all three of us ended up working in creative fields.

Q: What was growing up in Australia like, as part of the first big generation of Vietnamese Australians? Growing up here, I was really lost in knowing what it meant to be an immigrant, a refugee, and connected to an unpopular war. The fact that my parents never talked about the war or Việt Nam only heightened my identity crisis. Was this common in Australia?

A: Growing up in Australia, life was interesting. I went to primary school with kids from 20 different backgrounds, so when we’re all immigrants, then we’re all in the same boat, so to speak. I had friends from Chinese, Portuguese, Lebanese, Italian and Tongan backgrounds among others. It was fun, and we didn’t think about what it meant to be a refugee or an outsider. When I went to high school, I was the only kid from a Vietnamese background in the entire school and that was a totally new experience for me.

In Australia, the Vietnamese people here actually do talk about the war a lot. They go to protests and constantly remind us of the challenges they went through to give their children better lives in Australia.

Q: What is the Vietnamese Australian community like now, especially the arts and filmmaking community? I feel like here in the states, it’s finally growing and maturing not just the artists but also the structures that support artists, like VAALA and ViFF, and newspapers, and universities, and galleries. Like our parents’ generation was all about planting roots and surviving, and now our generation has the privilege (the language, the education, the access, the money, etc.) to make art about our experiences. Your thoughts on this?

A: The Vietnamese community in Australia is very conservative when it comes to employment. The majority of Vietnamese kids will end up working in fields such as medicine, dentistry, engineering, computer science and commerce. It takes a lot of courage to go into the arts, and even I started off studying law but ended up working in films. In Australia, the support for the arts is there but the audience is lacking. Overall, the Vietnamese population in Australia is too small to create and sustain organizations which are devoted only to Vietnamese arts.

Q: How did you become interested in becoming a filmmaker? Was there a first film or time when you said, ''Hey, I have to do this?'' What was that moment?

A: I remember being on stage for the first time as an actor, when I was 19. I looked out, and there was this audience, and they were hanging off every word I was saying. I felt a complete connection to the audience that I had never felt before in my life and for a moment, I felt that time stopped. We were sharing in something truly communal and that’s when I realized the power of storytelling. I felt, ''Hey, I have to do this.'' For me, working in films is purely a way of sharing your own personal, unique vision with the rest of the world.

Q: What was your path to becoming a director? Did you study film in school, apprentice with someone, or just jump into it?

A: I became a director through learning on film sets. I worked as a writer first, on ''Delivery Day,'' and as an actor on several films. I would observe, I would question and I would absorb the process. When it came to directing my own films later on, I found the process came rather naturally.

Q: What does your mother think of your non-traditional career? Did she ever try and persuade you to become a doctor or engineer? Does she even know you make films (just kidding)?

A: My mother is fortunately very supportive of my career. I’ve cast her in a whole bunch of films I’ve worked on, which really helps. But I do remember when I first told her I was going into filmmaking, she thought I was rather crazy. ''No one goes into films, especially if you come from a Vietnamese background!'' I told her I’d do it for a year, and I’d stop and become an accountant. That was 10 years ago.

Q: ''Footy Legends'' is your second film and was released in Australia three years ago. What was its local reception? Its international? Did you feel like you were taking a risk by remixing the sports film genre and adding the refugee experience?

A: ''Footy Legends'' was an amazing experience. Making the film itself was an incredible challenge we had a big cast, a limited shooting period and it was the first time I was shooting a feature on 35mm film. Added to that, I was trying to make a film as well as flying around the country as the country’s Young Australian of the Year for that year.

The local reception was excellent, we had some really positive support for the film here. Internationally, it’s much more difficult. Our sales agent has sold the film to a number of territories, and it’s always a surprise to hear that your film has been picked up in China or a small country somewhere. I think that the film is definitely much more of an Australian film. The Vietnamese community in Australia has very much embraced our film, which is wonderful.

Mixing the sports genre was definitely a risk, but in order to make films with an impact, I think we all have to take risks. I believe films should be bold, powerful, unique and challenging.

Q: What was your reaction to being selected for ViFF and then being chosen as the opening night film? Have you been to the U.S. and Little Saigon before? What were your impressions?

A: It’s wonderful to be the opening night film for ViFF. I have been to the U.S. before, and to Little Saigon. It’s great. I love the food and the American accents. It’s like seeing your favorite American films come to life! Especially the yellow buses. We don’t have yellow buses in Australia. Yellow buses only exist in movies. Until I arrived in the U.S.

To be chosen as the opening night film of VIFF is a real honor. I think it’s amazing what Ysa [Lê, festival co-director] and the team have done, to create and curate a film festival purely for Vietnamese cinema around the world. I’m delighted to come over to the U.S. for the festival.

Q: Can you please tell me a little about the origin of ''Footy Legends''? Everything from the origins to the script, the casting, the actual filming, the editing process, and last, finding a distributor. Any funny or not-so-funny anecdotes?

A: It’s a long process, but the origin of ''Footy Legends'' came from the days of my brother and I growing up and playing rugby together. We had ambitions to play rugby professionally at one stage but we were never big enough, fast enough or strong enough. I always thought that one day, it’ll be great to make a film about a Vietnamese Australian young man who plays rugby really well.

After making ''The Finished People,'' a really gritty, hard-hitting drama about life on the streets of western Sydney, I thought it’ll be great to make something entirely different a feel-good film about a Vietnamese-Australian rugby player who’s trying to care for his sister, inspired by my own personal experiences.

The casting process involved a lengthy process of auditions and trials. We had to make sure that our cast could run, kick and pass a ball so our audition process involved hours of running around and passing the football. Eventually, we found a lot of first-time actors who were amazing in the film.

The filming was a challenge filming the drama scenes was easy, but filming the football scenes was an absolute headache. Every time a football bounces on the ground, it bounces in a hundred different directions and you can never get the continuity right. We wasted hours of film footage just waiting and hoping the ball would bounce in the right direction. The editing took us over six months in the end.

Fortunately, we had already had a distributor locked in before we began filming. That was Mel Gibson’s company, Icon Films, who had come onboard early because they were big fans of the script. Mel Gibson himself used to play rugby when he was growing up.

Q: How popular is rugby in Australia, if you were to rank the most popular sports? And how did you manage to get all those rugby stars to be in your film? That seemed like a logistical nightmare when I found out they were real legends of the game. What was it like to work with them, whom I presume you were familiar or even fans of?

A: Rugby is very popular in Australia, and there are so many different types of rugby, too. The rugby we have in our film is rugby league, which I guess is fairly similar to gridiron but without all the padding and protection. That was another real concern what do we do if our actors got injured? In the end, we had broken ribs, bruises, cuts and everything in between by the time we finished filming.

Getting the rugby stars to be in our film was a matter of convincing them that we had a great story that needed to be told. Fortunately, they all made time for us but certainly it was a logistical nightmare. These players are now coaches, trainers and have a lot of other commitments.

Directing rugby players was really daunting, as you can imagine. I was directing their rugby scenes, and coordinating all the moves and the plays. So here they were, legends of the game who’d played for 30 years, and suddenly they have a young Vietnamese guy tell them how to play and where to run and how to kick the football. It was pretty funny.

Q: As a Vietnamese American writer, I write about Vietnamese people, but try to avoid stories that revolve strictly around identity and identity issues and focus on the very intimate drama of our lives aside from identity. Is this an expectation others have of you or that you have/had of yourself? And if so, how do you negotiate this issue?

A: I try not to think about identity issues when I’m writing or making films. I think that if we consciously tackle identity issues head-on, then we’re looking at the world through the eyes of a university lecturer and not an artist, writer or director. I do my best to truthfully portray the story through my characters’ hearts and minds, and if it so happens that people will read identity issues into it, then so be it. If not, then it doesn’t matter. Essentially, what I’ve discovered is that people will analyze your work in a million different ways no matter what you intended in the first place.

Q: Your brother is also involved in the entertainment industry, as a writer, actor, and comedian. Was this a coincidence or did you guys make a childhood pact with one another?

A: We made no childhood pact whatsoever. The only childhood pact I made with Anh was ''Anh, if you eat all of the moon cake and not give me any, I’m going to punch you.''

Seriously, we both grew up entertaining each other and entertaining our family. Somehow, Ánh entered the field of stand-up comedy and I ended up working in films. ''Footy Legends'' was the first time we’d ever worked together.

Q: It’s quite refreshing to see you recognized for both your filmmaking and your philanthropic work. Often, artists can be insular people or focused exclusively on their craft. What leads you to volunteer to make films with young people and work with young Vietnamese Australians?

A: I think making films is a way of connecting with people. For me, it’s all about making a difference. When you work as a volunteer, you’re directly making a difference. To me, philanthropic work is another way of expressing yourself, another way of sharing a part of who you are with the rest of the world. Filmmaking is the same thing, except that you’re sharing your stories with the rest of the world.

Q: What is the most challenging part of directing a film? And what is the most rewarding?

A: The most challenging part is finding the perfect cast. The most rewarding is sitting in a cinema with several hundred people and seeing your vision on a giant screen.

Q: If a young filmmaker were reading this interview, what advice would you give to him or her? Something you didn’t know before you got into the ''business'' that you would have made things much easier or possible?

A: Don’t listen to anyone else. They only know as much as you do.