About:
Hi, my name's Kim Paul Nguyen, I'm a social worker, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Over the past 12 years, my work has been published by The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Monocle Magazine, The Big Issue, Bhutan Broadcasting Service, The Lancet, the WHO, VICE, the Sydney Opera House, SBS News, Inner Sydney Voice and the BBC.
I actually started my career in child protection, after graduating with a Bachelor of Social Work in 2003.
But after years working in child protection investigations, I realised I was only addressing the symptoms, not the root causes of the problems I was supposed to be fixing.
The abusive behaviours and unsafe living conditions we were trying to prevent weren't happening in a vacuum - the families I was seeing were living under immense social, economic and environmental pressures outside of their control, that were driving or exacerbating family crisis.
Working in London in 2004, I remember being instructed to turn away desperate families in need of food and housing, because they were asylum seekers and the UK government didn't want to encourage immigration. We were told to tell them we could remove their children, but not help house the family, despite the fact a foster placement would be more expensive than a hotel room, and that it would be state perpetration of abuse. The context of the asylum claim, the reasons why these families had left their homes in the first place, was totally ignored.
That realisation started me on the journey I'm still on. To get to the bottom of how our world operates, to understand the impacts, systems and power structures, and ultimately to find out how things can get better.
I started in fairly idiosyncratic style, spending 18 months riding my pushbike across Australia, Asia and Europe back in 2008-09. Using a little camcorder, I documented the climate impacts and solutions I saw, and so got nominated for Young Australian of the Year in 2010 (for the ACT).
But finishing that ride, I felt I needed to retrain, because it seemed to me that journalism was the best way I could contribute. I started studying in Amsterdam and eventually graduated with a Master of Journalism and Master of International Development and Environmental Analysis in 2013. (My major student work was the production of 2 long-form documentaries.)
It's been a bit of a roller coaster since then. I published 4 articles in quick succession in early 2014, with The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Monocle, but after returning to Australia I couldn't find work in journalism, so returned to social work.
I also began making short videos and documentaries for NGOs, which gradually became my main source of income.
In 2015 I wrote an article for The Big Issue, and in 2016 spent the year in the US and Central America, unsuccessfully pitching stories to news outlets but successfully making short videos/documentaries for NGOs and community groups as I travelled.
Unsure of how to progress my career, I applied for a Filmmakers Without Borders Fellowship and ended up getting posted to Bhutan in 2017. A 45 minute documentary I made for the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy was broadcast on BBS, the Bhutan Broadcasting Service and that year I also completed a number of short documentaries internationally, included one for The Lancet in Fiji.
Returning to Australia in 2018 I still couldn't find work as a journalist, so ended up getting a job as multimedia producer at a major NGO for 18 months, until I quit to return to freelancing.
That's what I've been doing since mid-2019, working for both NGOs and news media outlets.
In 2020 I received a grant from the Walkley Foundation to make Conversations with Coal Miners about Climate Change, which was eventually released by VICE News in early 2022. That year the film was a finalist in the prestigious Rory Peck Trust awards in London.
In 2024 I was commissioned to work on a documentary for the BBC about the Adani-owned Carmichael Coal Mine. That film, The Battle for Doongmabulla Springs, premiered at Sheffield DocFest in June 2025, before being screened on BBC2. The film features my on-screen research into workplace safety violations at the Carmichael, as published by SBS News in Jan 2025.
I'm currently working on new projects, which I can't mention until they are released, but I'm always looking to collaborate and write new stories, so if you want to get in touch, please fill out the form below. Many thanks, Kim