While in quarantine, I made a short film called runIMMIGRANTrun. It’s based on a personal essay I wrote as a senior at Stanford when I was asked to speak on my FLI (first gen low income) identity. There’s already been a great deal of fantastic storytelling about the narrative of the immigrant experience, so here I wanted to try out an unconventional style in an attempt to convey the non-linear, non-narrative feelings of my own personal reckonings based on my experience as a first generation immigrant.

It’s been a hard time, y’all. This one goes out to all my beautiful peeps of the Asian diaspora and really anyone whose life has been shaped by migration. It’s always extremely heartening when we are able to tell our own stories. Here’s mine.

Directed by Yan Yan (USA)