Schedule of Events

12:00 pm - CENTERPIECE SHORTS at Roxie Theater

The first time short films have been a festival Centerpiece in CAAM's recent memory, this program highlights ambitious, bold short films that experiment with narrative and documentary form and share new perspectives from Asian and Asian American filmmakers.

Director Chheangkea (Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites), Xiaolu Wang (at the bamboo green), Director Angbeen Saleem (Billo Rani), Director Birdy Wei-Ting Hung (A Brighter Summer Day for the Lady Avengers), Director Hao Zhou (Correct Me If I'm Wrong), and Director Kiran Koshy (Kumar Kumar) will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

GOLDEN DRAGON
Directed by Boren Chhith
When Vicheka wakes up in a hospital in the coastal town of Sihanoukville, he tries to piece together…

GRANDMA NAI WHO PLAYED FAVORITES
Directed by Chheangkea
During her chaotic family's Qingming visit, dead Grandma Nai sneaks away from her peaceful afterlife after overhearing that her queer grandson is about to get engaged to a woman.

AT THE BAMBOO GREEN
Directed by Xiaolu Wang
A one-take recording of a family's visit to the bamboo green at the foot of the Helan Mountains.

BILLO RANI
Directed by Angbeen Saleem
When a 12-year-old girl is made aware of her unibrow at Islamic Sunday School in a lesson on…

Asian woman eating watermelon slice
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY FOR THE LADY AVENGERS
Directed by Birdy Wei-Ting Hung
Taiwan, 1980s. Hot summer day, watermelon juice, and a teenage girl's sexual awakening with her celluloid fantasies. Shot on 16mm.

CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG
Directed by Hao Zhou
A filmmaker undergoes a series of home remedies and spiritual interventions as their family attempts to purge their…

KUMAR KUMAR
Directed by Kiran Koshy
Alone on his birthday, a man is on the brink of ending it all when an unexpected message…

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12:00 pm - THE MOTHERLOAD at AMC Kabuki 4

Directed by Van Tran Nguyen, Alex Derwick

An imaginative telling of the story of a Vietnamese American mother-daughter duo who, in their attempt to heal the rift between them, reenact and satirize scenes from celebrated Vietnam War films while depicting a diasporic reality. Conflict among the mother-daughter duo arises when Jessca (Tran Nguyen) embarks on a quest to find a home that once belonged to her mother's family during pre-war Vietnam. Kim (Jessca's mother, played by Tran Nguyen's mother), happy in her new but precarious position in America, fights to stay stateside. As their desires cause them to grow apart they are faced with old myths about the motherland, depicted in a public-broadcasting television show. With a cast consisting only of two Vietnamese American women re-enacting and satirizing scenes from celebrated Vietnam War films while depicting a diasporic reality, this movie takes a closer look at what has been lost in war, what we find in the rubble, and how to hold on to what remains. Two inventive storylines complicate The Motherload to levels of absurdity.

Both of these glide in and out beneath the narrative backbone of Jessca and Kim's personal story, and reflect the stunning disconnect between the Vietnamese diaspora and the world's understanding of their presence.

Directors Van Tran Nguyen and Alex Derwick, and Key Cast member Sang "Sandy " Tran will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

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12:00 pm - WHAT ABOUT CHINA? at SFMOMA

Directed by Trịnh T. Minh-hà

Feminist scholar Trinh T. Minh-ha explores China through multiple perspectives in this documentary, blending 1990s rural footage with poetry and folk traditions from provinces Anhui, Hubei, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangxi. She examines the process of "harmonising" rural China, focusing on women's voices and communal spaces, offering a journey into the wealth of China's traditional architecture while exploring the hinterlands of self and other in their encounter.

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12:30 pm - TE PUNA ORA (THE SOURCE OF LIFE) at AMC Kabuki 3

Directed by Virginie Tetoofa

The Source of Life (Te Puna Ora) is an artful telling of a burgeoning environmental movement in French Polynesia. The film follows three indigenous women–a community leader, a spearfisher and a teenage activist–as they cultivate an alliance at the front lines of climate change.

Inspired by the myths and rituals that shape their nature-based culture, these unlikely leaders move beyond bureaucracy and toward ground-up empowerment. Together, they oppose overdevelopment, take back indigenous land, and ultimately demand recognition from international leaders. The film starts and finishes with scenes of reenactment from the legend of goddess Hina while she, like them, sails through the South Pacific, faces a storm and finds purpose. This is a story of how a small community can give hope for global change.

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2:00 pm - CENTERPIECE: LOVE, CHAOS, KIN at AMC Kabuki 1

Directed by Chithra Jeyaram

An unexpected pregnancy compels an Indian immigrant mother to help her adopted twin daughters reconnect with their White birth mother—grappling with life's challenges—and estranged Native American father, exposing raw class divides while transforming their understanding of identity and belonging.

The CAAM-funded film emerged from director Chithra Jeyaram (Foreign Puzzle) and her desire to adopt. The film weaves together observational scenes, animated sequences, and reflective thoughts. It also unpacks the concept of open adoption, revealing the persistent ongoing effort needed to build authentic relationships between the children, birth, and adoptive parents regardless of race, class, or geographic location. This is a CAAMFest Centerpiece Documentary presentation.

Director Chithra Jeyaram will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

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2:30 pm - SOFTSHELL at Roxie Theater

Directed by Jinho Myung

Softshell, Jinho Myung's debut feature captures the awkwardness of early adulthood as two siblings stumble through tangled, quiet lives. Shot on grainy 16mm film, this dramedy captures the rhythm of life in New York as we follow Thai American siblings Jamie (Caledonia Abbey) and Narin (Legyaan Thapa) carving out new paths after their mother's death. Their sharp, tender banter brings life to a relationship brimming with unspoken understanding, while their experiences with fetishization and cultural identity reveal unsettling truths about the world they inhabit.

With its Mumblecore aesthetics and shaky handheld camera movements (by DP Rhys Scarabosio), Softshell brings a unique perspective to the American indie landscape, balancing surreal, offbeat humor with deep moments of melancholy. The film's vivid, at times grotesque imagery — like the siblings' connection to a pet chameleon or a whale shark — adds layers of symbolic weight to a story about the tense spaces between people and the quiet moments that define connection.

Softshell won the Belfort International Film Festival Grand Prix Janine Bazin Juried Prize.

This film contains graphic content in the form of violence toward animals.

Director Jinho Myung will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

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2:30 pm - THE GROCERY LIST SHOW at AMC Kabuki 4

Directed by Emily Strong

Hosted by former Top Chef contender, Chrissy Camba, The Grocery List Show is a delicious cooking documentary series exploring cultural grocery stores in the U.S. Each episode highlights a store and Chrissy's grocery shopping adventure with friends and special guests.

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3:00 pm - AGAINST AMNESIA: Screening & Seminar at AMC Kabuki 3

This program, in partnership with the Islamic Scholarship Fund, explores the intertwined histories and ongoing realities of displacement, colonial violence, and resistance in Palestine and Bangladesh. Through a narrative short about a Palestinian grandmother uprooted from her home and a documentary on the forgotten 1970s genocide in Bangladesh, the program highlights the the ways in which historical violence shapes mundane aspects of everyday life. A facilitated discussion will follow, connecting past and present to foster collective understanding and solidarity.

BENGAL MEMORY
Directed by Fahim Hamid
A Bangladeshi American undertakes a journey to learn about Bangladesh's liberation war and his family's immigration to America,…

MAQLUBA
Directed by Mike Elsherif
Laila, a Palestinian-American drummer, visits her grandmother in her new apartment during a powerful storm under the guise…

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3:00 pm - NEW WAVE at SFMOMA

Directed by Elizabeth Ai

The New Wave that exhilarated Vietnamese American teens in the 1980s, funnily enough, wasn't actually what most people think of as New Wave. It was Eurodisco that Chinatown record stores had put in the same bin as the Depeche Mode and OMD albums. But to a generation born to Vietnamese refugee parents in California, neither the categorization, nor the sometimes nonsensical lyrics mattered. The new sounds of synthesizers and drum machines became symbols for their rebellious futures.

2021 CAAM Fellow Ai's first feature New Wave (which won Special Jury Mention at the Tribeca Film Festival) follows her childhood. She was raised by her party-music-obsessed teenage aunts and uncles, while her absent parents struggled with financial insecurity. In addition to honoring her Aunt Myra, Ai interviews popular New Wave cover singers including Linda Trang Dai, known as the "Vietnamese Madonna," and Ian "DJ BPM" Nguyen. It also delves into why and how these wild-haired Gen X-ers needed an escape from the trauma of the refugee experience.

The film's producers include So Yun Um (Liquor Store Dreams), Diane Quon (Minding the Gap, Bad Axe) and Shang-Chi star Simu Liu.

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5:00 pm - STANDING ABOVE THE CLOUDS at AMC Kabuki 1

Directed by Jalena Keane-Lee

Standing Above the Clouds is a feature-length documentary that follows three families of Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists, standing to protect their sacred mountain Mauna Kea from the building of the massive Thirty Meter Telescope. Directed by Jalena Keane-Lee (Tracing History, The Construct: Female Laborers and the Fight for Equality), Standing Above the Clouds was expanded from her 2020 short film of the same name.

The film premiered at Hot Docs 2024 where it won the Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary. It also won Special Mention for Best International Director at Doc Edge 2024 and Best International Cinematography at Film Ambiente 2024.

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5:00 pm - SHOWCASE: PALESTINIAN LANDSCAPES at Roxie Theater

Palestinian Landscapes brings together two powerful films exploring empire, ecology, and resistance. Razan Alsalah's A Stone's Throw evokes dreamlike cycles of displacement and return across fragmented geographies shaped by resource and labor economies. In Foragers, Jumana Manna traces the criminalization of foraging in Palestine, revealing how colonial legal systems regulate access to land and tradition. Together, these films offer poetic and political meditations on landscape as both a site of control and a ground for resilience. Through intimate gestures and expansive visions, Palestinian Landscapes asks: who defines the land and who belongs to it?

Director Razan Alsalah will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

A Stone's Throw
Directed by Razan Alsalah
Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice, from land and labor, from Haifa to Beirut to a Gulf…

Foragers
Directed by Jumana Manna
‘Foragers' depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a…

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5:30 pm - MADE IN ETHIOPIA at AMC Kabuki 3

Directed by Max Duncan, Xinyan Yu

When a massive Chinese industrial park lands in rural Ethiopia, a dusty farming town finds itself at the new frontier of globalization. The sprawling factory complex's formidable Chinese director Motto now needs every bit of mettle and charm she can muster to push through a high-stakes expansion that promises 30,000 new jobs. Ethiopian farmer Workinesh and factory worker Beti have staked their futures on the prosperity the park promises. But as initial hope meets painful realities, they find themselves, like their country, at a pivotal crossroads.

Filmed over four years with singular access, Made in Ethiopia lifts the curtain on China's historic but misunderstood impact on Africa, and explores contemporary Ethiopia at a moment of profound crisis. The film, which won a Special Jury Mention at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, throws audiences into two colliding worlds: an industrial juggernaut fueled by profit and progress, and a vanishing countryside where life is still measured by the cycle of the seasons. And its nuance, complexity and multi-perspective approach go beyond black and white narratives of victims and villains. As the three women's stories unfold, Made in Ethiopia challenges us to rethink the relationship between tradition and modernity, growth and welfare, the development of a country and the well-being of its people.

Director Xinyan Yu will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

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6:00 pm - MONGRELS at AMC Kabuki 4

Directed by Jerome Yoo

In rural Canada in the 1990s, a Korean family – a widower, his teenage son, and young daughter – attempts to find their way in a new land, while navigating the darkness of their grief. Sonny (Jae-Hyun Kim), a huntsman, is enticed by an old friend to immigrate to Canada, where he is hired to eradicate the feral canines plaguing their town in exchange for shelter. Hajoon (Da-Nu Nam) navigates what it means to be a man, and young Hana (Sein Jin), missing her mother, dreams up ways to make her return.

This is Korean Canadian filmmaker Jerome Yoo's first feature film, and the title Mongrels also represents the many complex emotional layers existing within immigrant communities.

Director Jerome Yoo will be in attendance for the screening + Q&A.

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8:00 pm - CLOSING NIGHT: YELLOW FACE at AMC Kabuki 1

Directed by Annette Jolles

The Broadway play from Roundabout Theatre Company follows DHH (Daniel Dae Kim), a fictionalized version of playwright David Henry Hwang, as he joins Asian American protesters speaking out against the casting of white actor Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian lead of Miss Saigon – a real-life controversy in the 1990s – only to find that when it comes time for him to cast his next play, he makes the same mistake by casting a white actor (Ryan Eggold) as his lead, thinking he is multiracial Asian. Francis Jue plays DHH's immigrant Chinese father targeted by the U.S. government, a role Jue originated for the 2007 world premiere. The play was filmed on Broadway by Great Performances on PBS.

Daniel Dae Kim, Francis Jue, and Shannon Tyo are expected to be in attendance for the screening and Q&A.

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