Biography

Shal was bitten by the film bug early, and fondly remembers balancing his family's video camera on his nine-year-old shoulder (it shot directly onto VHS tapes and weighed a ton).

Born and raised in Minneapolis, he graduated from NYU in 2008, where his thesis film took first place at the SyFy Channel Film Contest. Since then he's kept busy in the narrative, documentary, and commercial worlds. He regularly works with progressive politicians and has created commercials and content for clients like Bernie Sanders and the ACLU. His narrative and documentary work has won Adweek's Ad of the Day and Vimeo Staff Picks on multiple occasions, and he is a Sundance Institute grantee.

Shal loves to mix genres; he's had two films premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival - one was a sci-fi drama set in Vietnam ( The Last Fisherman ), the other an experimental documentary about solitary confinement in American prisons ( The Box ). Shal wants to blur the line between art and entertainment and push his audience to ask deeper questions about their own lives and preconceptions.

Shal splits his time between New York, Los Angeles, and Ho Chi Minh City. He's represented by UTA and Echo Lake Entertainment.

- IMDb mini biography by: Shal Ngo