Independent Filmmaking, Reinvention, and Coming Clean: A Conversation with Vince Duqué

What happens when you've spent decades helping other people make their films—and finally decide it's your turn?

For filmmaker Vince Duqué, the answer wasn't to wait for the perfect screenplay, the right funding, or someone's permission. It was to buy a camera and start shooting.

On this episode of The Holly Hughes Podcast, I sit down with Vince, a Filipino-American writer, director, producer, and former Hollywood assistant director who now lives in Paris. After more than 20 years working across studio film and television, Vince is completing his first feature as a director: Je m’appelle Alvie Balicoco.

The film is an autofictional road movie about a Filipino-American immigrant living in Paris who takes his French friend on a trip across America to see U2 at the Sphere in Las Vegas. But what begins as a concert adventure becomes something much more personal—a story about loneliness, abandonment, identity, people-pleasing, and the complicated emotional reality of starting over.

Vince's filmmaking process is as unconventional as the story itself. He began production before the screenplay was finished, allowing real life, unexpected mistakes, improvisation, and discovery to shape the film. One mistake on the road to Las Vegas ultimately created the conflict the story needed.

We talk about why having years of Hollywood experience can sometimes make it harder to trust your own creative voice, and why independent filmmaking can require letting go of the formulas and expectations that dominate the industry.

Vince also speaks candidly about depression, immigration, loneliness, and the fact that reinvention isn't always glamorous or inspiring. Sometimes it's disorienting. Sometimes it's lonely. And sometimes the most honest art comes from the parts of life we'd rather not explain.

At the center of his film—and this conversation—is the idea of coming clean. Not performing authenticity. Not trying to make yourself look perfectly healed or understood. But telling the truth about who you are, what you've experienced, and what you're still figuring out.

If you're a filmmaker, writer, artist, or anyone trying to create something before you feel completely ready, Vince's story is a powerful reminder: you don't have to wait until everything makes sense to begin.