These Documentary Filmmakers Set Out to Make an Honest Film About BTS—and Got More Than They’d Hoped For
Director Bao Nguyen and producer Jane Cha Cutler talk to Vanity Fair about the making of their new documentary, BTS: The Return.
By Regina Kim
April 6, 2026
In one of the most highly anticipated comebacks in recent memory, global superstar group BTS has surged back into the spotlight after a nearly four-year hiatus. The K-pop boy band’s long-awaited return, following its members’ military service, has dominated news headlines—while its fans, known as ARMY, have once again set social media ablaze. The septet’s latest album, Arirang, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with lead single “Swim” topping the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release.
But BTS’s return to the pinnacle of pop wasn’t easy, as revealed in the new documentary BTS: The Return. Directed by Bao Nguyen (Be Water, The Greatest Night in Pop) and produced by This Machine, Hybe, and East Films, the 93-minute film follows members RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook as they gather in a Los Angeles studio to work on their comeback album, Arirang. The result is a raw, intimate portrait of their creative process—and the doubts and pressures that come with global fame as they attempt to define the next chapter of their career.
Vanity Fair spoke with Nguyen and producer Jane Cha Cutler about the making of the movie and the close collaboration with BTS and Hybe, the group’s parent company, that brought it to life.
Vanity Fair: Can you tell me a bit about how this documentary came about? Why did you decide to make a documentary about BTS?
Bao Nguyen: I went to go see BTS at one of their SoFi [Stadium] shows. I love live music, but that was the loudest concert I’ve ever been to, and just feeling the energy of the group onstage was something that was really inspiring to me. If you go to a BTS concert, you know that they can really bring the crowd in in an intimate way through their dialogue with the fans. When they were having one of these conversations with the fans and talking about going on hiatus soon, it reminded me of the Homeric myth of The Odyssey—BTS being Odysseus about to go into the military, and ARMY being Penelope, longing for their heroes. So that just made me think this could be an amazing film. I talked to Hybe about that. It didn’t work out at that time, because military service is very private and secretive, as it should be. It was a few years later, when they came out of the military, that James Shin [president of film and television at Hybe America] reached out to me and told me, “Remember when you pitched me this idea of BTS being The Odyssey? Well, they’re back, and we’d totally be interested in working with you.” He was in talks with This Machine and Jane [Cha Cutler], and Jane and I had been developing a project in the past for a while that didn’t work out. So I jumped at the opportunity to work with Jane.
Jane Cha Cutler: When [BTS] had to stop at the height of their fame, I thought to myself, Well, they are going to get back together. And what a story that would be. James and I had gotten to know each other, and I said to him, “I really want to be part of the team that tells the story for when BTS reunites.” And he was like, “Yeah, who doesn’t?” But I kept on bothering him. The project that Bao and I had been developing was about Asian American designers, and while that didn’t go, it’s very fortunate that we got to tell the story of this very singular band coming back together for their global tour.
Who was the target audience for this documentary? Were you specifically thinking about ARMY?
Nguyen: When I’m making a film, I actually think of myself as the audience. I want to make a film that I want to watch, because it’s hard to predict how ARMY is going to feel, or how a general audience is going to feel. But that being said, I think you have to have that in the back of your mind because, of course, we want this film to be a love letter to ARMY, a love letter to BTS, and also a way for individuals who don’t know much about BTS to feel the themes of coming together and what it means to come back to something.
What has been the general response from ARMY based on what you’ve seen so far?
Nguyen: For me, overwhelmingly, the feeling has been love from ARMY—love for the documentary, and how raw and honest it felt seeing the friction that’s caused through the songwriting process and the friction between the fellow members and the label. I think a lot of credit is due to the label and the members for wanting to show that openly.
I like to say that I’m not trying to make a film about people—I want to make a film with people. So the process was deeply collaborative. We spent a lot of time talking to each member beforehand, asking them what they were ready to share, what they wanted to keep private, and what this chapter felt like for them.
How hard or easy was it to get the BTS members to open up like that?
Nguyen: When you’re documenting people who are at the top of their game, you kind of expect it to be clear sailing. But within the first couple of days, we saw how anxious they were. We’re trying to catch them at this vulnerable moment—in a present moment too, where there’s a lot of pressure on them. Even BTS have apprehensions and anxieties, and I think it goes to show how much they cared about ARMY’s response to the album. We came in with the best intentions and were trying to approach this project with as much humility and sensitivity and care as possible.
Cha Cutler: We couldn’t have made this film without the members’ buy-in. They said from the beginning that they wanted this to feel different. I think anytime you start a documentary of this sort, you need that buy-in from the subjects, because otherwise it feels like a wall is up and it doesn’t work. So we thank them for that, because being vulnerable—especially at a time when things are changing—is not easy. It was very courageous of them to do that.
Nguyen: We were able to show the film to the members right before we completed the film as a respectful gesture to them. I got a text in the middle of the night from the label, saying, “Oh my God, they love the film!” And that was such a sigh of relief to me.
Were there a lot of things that Hybe and/or BTS asked to change in the final version of the documentary?
Nguyen: Not much. Of course, there’s small things, but I think most changes were more about privacy and safety things that I think they know better than we do.
Cha Cutler: Honestly, we wouldn’t have had access to some of these meetings without the label letting us know about them, like that meeting where they’re listening to the various versions of “Swim” and “Body to Body” and having the conversation with Chairman Bang about how much of “Arirang” to include. They were very straightforward with us from the beginning. They were like, “Our members are very positive, polite young men. They don’t fight with each other. They’re not dramatic.” Bao and I were both like, “Oh, okay. I guess there’s gonna be no drama?”
Nguyen: We were wondering what the tension and the friction of the film would be. The friction was external forces, right? The pressure of coming back to the unknown became the drama, rather than the drama being within the members. There were debates and creative tension, which I think is healthy. That was something that was very eye-opening to me, because sometimes people might view BTS purely as a monolith, but they’re all so individually different, creatively different. So to see them speak out and have their own opinions was one of the things that we hoped to show in the film.
How much of an input would you say Hybe had in the final product?
Nguyen: Once we explained to them what the artistic intent was and the reason behind the choice, that was all they needed. I think it was more of understanding what we wanted to say with the film and defending those choices. For me, beyond making a film that ARMY and the world would love, I just wanted to make an honest film about this group of guys who happen to be seven of the most famous people in the world going back into the studio and creating together again, and show that in the most raw, intimate way that I could possibly do it.
Cha Cutler: I’ll give you one concrete example. The end scene of the film is a beautiful performance of “Swim.” At first, I think there was a question of, what is the creative purpose behind that? And once we explained that that is the reward for sticking through the film—you see snippets of making the song, you see the process, but seeing that full performance of the final product is a reward—everybody was on board.
Did you already have certain things in mind beforehand that you wanted to focus on, or even an overall story that you wanted to tell? Or did most of it just happen organically?
Nguyen: I mean, there’s a framework and preparation I do as a director in terms of research and themes that I think we can touch upon with the film. But when you’re shooting, you sort of just surrender—and I use that in the best way possible—to the forces of what’s happening in front of you, what’s happening in the frame, what your participants are being generous to give you, and what they’re reflecting back into the screen. I let go of a lot of the things that I thought it’d be, and it became something even more meaningful.
All credit is due to our amazing editing team, but we think about how to use the cinematic language to emphasize certain themes and different people in the film. For me, it’s more meaningful to think about, how do we punctuate certain members and what they mean cinematically instead of how much screen time they have? The film starts with Jung Kook’s hand holding the camera. And the film ends with him saying “Cut!” at their performance. That’s very intentional.
For a filmmaker, the first and last frame are the most important.
For me, it’s how each of their stories becomes the cumulative story of BTS, rather than how much time they were onscreen. It’s having these deep conversations with them and always trying to feel what they’re feeling at that moment.
Did your impression of BTS change during filming, and if so, how? Was there anything very surprising that you learned about them while you were making this documentary?
Nguyen: Obviously, I knew them as the biggest band in the world that has this creative pressure and expectation of coming back to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But I forgot that they are the cultural ambassadors of Korea to the world. They’re global icons, and having to negotiate with that sort of pressure—RM says it in the film, that it’s such a heavy crown that they wear. Individually, it would be too heavy to bear, but because they are BTS, that’s the only way that they can hold this crown. And I thought that was beautiful.
