Yen Tan

Yen Tan is a Taiwanese-American gay filmmaker known for 1985 (2018), a quiet, deeply felt black-and-white film about a gay man returning home to Texas for Christmas during the AIDS epidemic — not yet having told his family about his HIV status or his life in New York — and Drift (2023). His work is distinguished by restraint, precision, and emotional honesty, and 1985 has been praised as one of the most sensitive films about the AIDS crisis in American independent cinema.