Senior student Arnold excels at his studies and is a frontrunner for education scholarships and accolades. Yet after returning from studying abroad in the United States, he begins to question the meaning and authoritarian practices of school itself, and his growing awareness then makes him ripe for temptation into an underground cheating ring.

How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage into the shadow economy catering to Chinese tourists who travel to the US to give birth for citizenship.

Told through a series of intimately observed vignettes, the story of a hidden global economy emerges–depicting the fortunes and tragedies that befall the ordinary people caught in its web.

A young woman gains more than a confidence boost after buying a pair of influencer-approved pants.

A struggling nature photographer is forced to confront the pain his family has carried for generations.

A privileged six-year-old Pakistani girl embarks on a mission to save her beloved pet goat from being eaten on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Azha, only to learn the meaning of sacrifice.

Roya and Bashir are a couple in love and are forced to flee their home. Hoping to enter Iran, they persuade smugglers Saku and Osho to get them there without a hitch, but things don’t go as planned.

When a Taiwanese American woman prepares lunches from her childhood, she struggles to forgive herself for pushing away her immigrant mother.

This year's narrative shorts are all about shoring up the courage to tackle adventure, harsh realities, and love.

Set in 1980's NYC, two Chinese restaurant workers find love while chasing their American dreams.

Award-winning filmmaker and super fan Kat Jayme sets out to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of her beloved hometown NBA team in hopes of bringing them back. In her obsessive quest to find out, she unravels the mystery that’s haunted the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies fans for 20 years.

THE GRIZZLIE TRUTH is a ’true-crime style' story exploring the deep roots of fandom, and an irreverent expose of the wild business of professional sports.

Beautiful and troubled Donya, an Afghan translator who used to work with the U.S. government, lives by herself in Fremont, California, and has trouble sleeping. Her routine changes when she’s promoted to writing the fortunes at her job at a fortune cookie factory in the city.

As her fortunes are read by strangers throughout the Bay, Donya’s smoldering longing drives her to send a message out to the world, unsure where it will lead.

THE TASTE OF MANGO, Chloe Abrahams’ debut feature, is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love.

At its centre are three extraordinary women: Their stories, testify to the entangled and ever-changing nature of inheritance and the ways in which we both hurt and protect the ones we love.

In his feature debut, THE FIFTH THORACIC VERTEBRA, South Korean filmmaker Park Syeyoung tells the story of mold left behind on a mattress after a couple splits. The film follows the life of the mold as it slowly grows into a creature that steals the vertebrae of humans who inhabit the bed.

A movie filled with deep longing and even deeper loneliness, it captures the wistfulness of young love lost and the monster of despair that emerges from that sense of abandonment.

Viewed continuously by students of Asian American Studies since its original release in 1983, "The Fall of the I-Hotel" provides an overview of Filipino American history.

This is not just a story about old men in an old building, but of multiple tragedies: ethnic communities redeveloped out of existence, housing gobbled up by realtors, the shabby treatment of the elderly, and the betrayal of American ideals learned in the Philippines by its American pioneers.

The award-winning extraordinary story of three elderly Nisei (2nd generation) women who led a successful 15-year campaign to issue the Go For Broke: Japanese American Soldiers of WWII Forever stamp.

Mia Yamamoto has seen it all. She was born in an incarceration camp during World War II. At age 60 she came out as transgender after a 20-year career as a criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles. At age 78, Mia shows no signs of slowing down.

We follow her mission throughout the years to rally communities of color around issues of racism and to bring visibility to the LGBTQ community. Her passion is rooted in her deep ties to the geography of L.A. and the neighborhoods she calls home.

The Things I Haven't Told You Yet is a collage-style, personal narrative composed of emotionally complex memories, questions, thoughts, and stories that meditate on identity, race, transnational adoption, grief, and intergenerational trauma. Filmmaker, Maya Wanner, pieces them together to create a mosaic of a mother-daughter relationship shaped by things left unsaid.

Documentary short on famed street photographer, Corky Lee, who recently passed away from COVID. Over the course of fifty years, he covered the most important events in Asian American history, including issues of hate crimes.

Ricky and Bobby Okamura wrestle with closing their beloved family-owned manju shop after serving the San Francisco Japantown community for 115 years.

Five documentary shorts that will indelibly remind you to treasure the Asian American elders in our community.

Over the course of a week-long beachside getaway, Amy, having recently undergone dramatic weight loss, finds herself wrestling between loyalty to her best friend Kim and her attraction to Kim's new boyfriend.

In this immersive meditation on elder consciousness and the act of caregiving a parent with dementia, filmmaker Rea Tajiri centers her mother’s storytelling wisdom as the dream fabric for this film.

A delicate weave between past and present, parenting and being parented, the reliability of memory and the desire to reinvent one's own life when you can't remember - are reflected upon in this tender and humorous film about aging, loss, mortality and transformation.

As the world grapples with an emerging global pandemic, three young Filipino women forge unexpected connections with their families and discover themselves in the process.

A self-documented time capsule during turbulent times, Kapwa Texas captures the unbreakable bond between Filipino family and community.

Get a free add-on ticket to the TEXAS SHORTS when you buy a ticket for this program.

A Vietnamese immigrant mother and daughter in the US argue over how to honor the late patriarch as they shop for his second death anniversary, and inadvertently involve a handsome stranger at the local Asian supermarket.

Enjoy this very special program of shorts by Texas Asian American filmmakers!

Ticket buyers for this program can claim a free ticket to KAPWA TEXAS (screening after it) as well as can attend our Texas Two-Step Night afterparty at Vivo

Teenager Ly and her cousins get high before a boisterous family Thanksgiving at their auntie’s house in southeast San Diego in 2006.

An anxious, aging millennial, Arab-American Austin transplant goes on a mission to find the platonic love of her life after realizing she’s never had one lasting female friend but will have to figure out how to befriend herself first.

When Alison Cho gets an emergency alert on her phone warning of an imminent missile attack, she calls her mom in a panic—only to struggle to explain the situation because she doesn't know the Korean word for "missile."

A family documents how their immigrant father Jerry, a recently retired Florida man, was recruited by the Chinese police to be an undercover agent, only to discover a darker truth.