Khoa Do

Khoa Do (Vietnamese: Đỗ Khoa, listen), is a film director, screenwriter, professional speaker and philanthropist who received the Young Australian of the Year Award in 2005. The Do family left Vietnam in 1980 and arrived in Sydney as Vietnamese refugees in August 1980. His brother is the comedian Anh Do. Khoa received a scholarship to attend St Aloysius' College in Milsons Point, graduating in 1996 and went on to study Law and Arts at the University of Sydney.

Khoa Do
Khoa Do at the 2005 Australian of the Year Awards
Born1979
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Occupation

Young Australian of the Year

Do was named the 2005 Young Australian of the Year for his "leadership, compassion, and will to inspire and inform Australians on issues that affect our communities." [1]

Philanthropy

Khoa Do has been active in helping the under-privileged in South-Western Sydney, especially the Vietnamese community. In 2005 he was awarded the Young Vietnamese-Australian of the Year Award for his services in drama and working with youths in Sydney's south-west. A year later, Do commenced voluntary work with disadvantaged kids at Cabramatta's Open Family Youth Social Services Centre. He was asked to teach film-making to these 'at risk' youths and saw no better way to teach them than to go ahead and make a film with them. While at University Do worked as an English teacher and job-seeking-skills volunteer among the youth living in Cabramatta. For his efforts, he was awarded the 2001 Young Citizen of the Year Award (Bankstown City) and in 2003, he also received a Centenary Medal.

Personal life

While fleeing Saigon by boat with his family in 1980 at the age of 18 months, Khoa narrowly escaped death at the hands of Thai pirates.[2]

Khoa Do's mother, Hien, played the role of Van Nguyen's mother, Kim, in Better Man, a film which he produced.[3]

Film Industry Awards
  • In 2001, Do was nominated for an AFI Award for his screen play for the short film Delivery Day. The film tells the story of a young girl and her struggle to balance the demands of school, her mother and the family's backyard sweatshop and is heavily based on Do's own experience.
  • In 2003, Do received the IF Independent Spirit Award for The Finished People. In 2004, Do was nominated for two AFI Awards, three Film Critics' Circle Awards and two Australian Writers' Guild Awards for this film and for his community theatre.
  • In 2005, he was also awarded the Powerhouse Wizard Award, which "recognises emerging leaders in Australian innovation and achievement."
  • In 2008, he was awarded the Phillip Parsons Young Playwright's Award.
  • In 2009, he was awarded the DIGISPAA award for his film Missing Water (later released as Mother Fish), and also received the CRC Award for the same film at the Sydney Film Festival. For the same film he has subsequently won prizes at the Orlando Film Festival, Canada International Film Festival and Vietnamese International Film Festival.

Selected filmography

References
  1. "Young Australian of the Year 2005". National Australia Day Council. Retrieved 28 January 2014.
  2. "No laughing matter". Steve Dow. 10 May 2009. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  3. David Wenham proud of Better Man's message, TV Tonight, 30 July 2013
Awards
Preceded by
Hugh Evans		 Young Australian of the Year
2005		 Succeeded by
Trisha Broadbridge
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