Yen Tan

Yen Tan is a Malaysian-American gay filmmaker, born in Kuala Lumpur in 1975, who emigrated to the US at 19 and is based in Texas. Discovering Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee as a teenager was a formative influence on his decision to pursue filmmaking in America. Tan directed the features Happy Birthday (2002) and Ciao (2008) before Pit Stop (2013), which premiered at Sundance and earned an Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award nomination. He is best 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.