What We Loved About LAAPFF 2025
Another year, another Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF). As a site that is (mostly) based in LA, we’ve made it an unofficial goal to cover LAAPFF every year to get the pulse on where Asian American independent film is at – you can find coverage from past years on our site here.
This year, however, was a little bit different. One of the short films that we worked on was screened as part of the fest! Wester Demandante’s “Puberty For Humans” was produced by our gaming editor/staff writer Justin Ricafort, and I helped do some music supervision on it too. I don’t know if having a film in the festival colored our experience of the festival too much (Justin can speak more on that), but it definitely gave us even more of a reason to attend. Mya Worrell, one of our other contributors (you may have seen their blurbs in our Weekly Bullet Review series), also attended quite a few screenings and had some personal connections with the festival as well.
While we all attended different events, saw different films, and met different people, Mya, Justin, and I wanted to take the time to talk about some of what made LAAPFF such a fun romp even after all these years. Read on to learn more about what stood out to us at the 2025 edition of the event. Maybe you’ll join us next year too? -Li-Wei Chu
The return to the Director’s Guild of America (DGA)
Justin: I have been to LAAPFF consecutively since 2019, so I was surprised that the first two days of the festival were spent at the Director’s Guild of America in West Hollywood. While this was a first for me, the festival has roots at the guild for premieres and events from before my time.
Apparently, the building was undergoing some major renovations and became inaccessible for a number of years, but those renovations definitely paid off. The DGA lobby and theater is a beautiful, high ceiling space that offered plenty of room* for opening night and provided three different theaters for films and panels. The elevator from the underground parking was extremely convenient. The little private phone call areas were distinct and funny. On Friday, we were able to take advantage of the outside patio area for some networking with other filmmakers.
While the DGA is a trek and a half for nearly everyone, it’s a great, shiny, and dignified venue for filmmakers.
*I imagine there is plenty of room on any “normal” occasion, but for some reason Opening Night was PACKED and toward the end of the night, people were snaking around each other for canned makgeolli and Park’s Finest bibingka cornbread. Not a bad opportunity if you’re trying to literally rub elbows with the Asian American culturati.
The AMC Atlantic Times Square 14 Movie Theater
Li-Wei: Speaking of location, one major bright spot for me about the festival was the fact that there was an outpost in the form of the AMC Atlantic Times Square 14 in Monterey Park. As the only one in the staff who lives in Diamond Bar, I’ve been long used to the fact that every time I want to go to any kind of movie premiere, I will inevitably have to portion out an hour plus of time in order to make the trek to Hollywood, Downtown LA, or Little Tokyo. Add onto that the headache of finding and paying for parking, calculating the cost of gas, and maneuvering LA traffic and you’ll quickly discover out why I don’t usually go to LA events.
The fact that a large portion of the festival program was held in Monterey Park (which itself is an Asian American enclave) was… a… lifesaver! Ample parking, delicious food options, and the fact that the theater was located just outside of the more populated DTLA area meant that this location offered an opportunity for more travel-averse theater patrons to see the films as well. The surrounding SGV area is also a highly populated Asian residential/suburban area, so I’d imagine that more Asian Americans would have been able to attend the screenings there without traveling too far. I think that’s a win.
The LAAPFF Welcome Event
Mya: I only attended two films at LAAPFF this year. Molokaʻi Bound was my first, and it opened the festival itself. (It was hosted at the DGA; the Launch Party shortly followed.) Before the film screened, Francis Cullado – Executive Director at Visual Communications – welcomed us to LAAPFF.
He introduced us to the festival’s artwork, created by Supernova Design. It’s a colorful, playful piece. Foregrounded by flowers, four elders uplift the younger generations. They rise, literally, into the air. As I remember Francis explaining it, the piece honored those who came before us. We give our flowers to those who’ve lifted us up, before they become flowers themselves.
Three other statements from Francis’ welcome represented the ethos of LAAPFF. He reminded the audience that, “resistance is labor, resistance is rest, resistance is being.” He told us to choose collective liberation over individual collective freedoms. Finally, he thanked us. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for being.”
Moloka’i Bound, directed by Alika Tengan
Mya: LAAPFF has been making efforts to treat the “Pacific” in its name just as equally as the “Asian.” The festival’s Pacific Cinewaves programming amplifies and spotlights Pasifika films, and to its credit, brings in amazing films and filmmakers every year. If you go to the 2025 website, Molokaʻi Bound is front and center as a featured program.
That said, I’m not sure the film festival’s audience was nearly as receptive. I remember Visual Communications practically begging community to fill seats right up to the day of Molokaʻi Bound’s premiere. Even still, it was a sparsely attended theatre. Most people who visited the DGA that evening were mostly there for the Opening Night Party.
Alika Tengen’s Molokaʻi Bound is a beautiful, heartwrenching homecoming. Specifically, it’s Kainoa De Silva (Holden Mandrial-Santos)’s homecoming. Recently released from prison, he’s now balancing on the tightrope that is parole. At the same time, he’s trying to reconnect with his son, rekindle his relationship with his ex, return to community, and relearn his roots.
The scenes that really stuck with me were the journeys. Physical, literal journeys. The first journey: Kainoa’s drive from prison back to family. In the back of his sister’s pickup truck, we see the many vistas of O‘ahu from the highway. We feel the confines of prison, and how, for a moment, the spectre of the future – of parole – recedes. This is his home. It’s warm, quiet, sorrowful. The last journey: Kainoa’s return to Molokaʻi. This too is warm, quiet, and full of sorrow. I don’t want to spoil the film. So much of the tension comes from the audience’s anxiety. Will Kainoa return to prison, to confinement? Will he and his son repair their relationship? I won’t answer this. What I can tell you is this: Kainoa is coming home.
C3:Converse and R3:Volve panel conversations
Justin: Though my focus this festival was narrower, I made an effort to patronize the C3: and R3: Conversations that I normally miss.
The Fireside Chat with Henry Chan was a wealth of information about Chan’s career as an Editor and Director in some of the 90s’ most watched Black sitcoms and how his sensibility and sensitivity allowed him to foster deep relationships with his productions.
In R3: Navigating Difficult Subject Matter in Post, documentary and narrative editors Aika Miyake, Dora Wu, David Chang, and Maysie Hoy discussed the elements of how to support editors in the filmmaking environment and advocating for the emotional needs of the stories they’re stewarding.
I was most excited to sit in for the R3: Fireside w/ Set Hernandez and Diane Quon, which illuminated the left turns in life that ultimately led to Quon’s filmmaking journey. It was inspiring to hear the amount of humility and passion from Hernandez and Quon to each other and the filmmaking world they believe in. Also, I was able to ask a question — half-motivated by the opportunity to speak into the Catchbox mic thing they used for all the panels.
Third Act, directed by Tadashi Nakamura
Justin: If you are organizing in or around Little Tokyo often (me), Third Act has been on your radar for months. The highly anticipated documentary by Tadashi Nakamura premiered at Sundance earlier this year, but was always meant to come home back to Little Tokyo. It’s difficult to put into words the level of present consequence the film had at its Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival premiere.
The documentary covers Tadashi’s intimate relationship with his father, Robert Nakamura, who was a foundational community member in Little Tokyo’s core organizations including the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center where the film was being screened, Visual Communications that organized the festival, the Japanese American National Museum where the post-reception was held, and a filmmaker known as the “Godfather of Asian American media.”
These are enormous shoes to fill for Tadashi, which is a theme thoroughly explored in the documentary – taking on a somewhat fateful, prophetic approach to the expectations of knowing, doing, and honoring within multiple generations of Japanese Americans between each other. Additionally, it discusses the unresolved grief associated with the Japanese American concentration camps which Robert had experienced firsthand as a child. The weight of Robert’s evident physical decline illustrates the urgency of being able to preserve stories, memories, and final moments between a son and his father and their community.
The film was ripe with emotion, as was the Aratani Theatre, where Tadashi, his family, and the filmmaking team referenced community members in the audience and those who were no longer with us. There was solemnity. There was celebration. It felt special seeing a flower bloom and return to the soil it was watered in. If you watch Third Act, you will be learning essential history to Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, and the United States.
Shorts Programming: Echoes From Beyond and From Visions to Reel: Living Legacy
Li-Wei: We’ve harped on about it a lot on our site before, but if you really want to know what the next generation of Asian American filmmaking will look like, just step into any one of the shorts programs that LAAPFF has to offer. And man, did the two shorts programs that I attended have some wild potential. I went into both completely blind (as in, I didn’t look up anything about the shorts that were part of the program) and I was thoroughly entertained throughout.
Both took place at the AMC Atlantic Times Square (see above) and were screened to mostly packed audiences. Echoes From Beyond was a co-presentation with Sorry Not Sorry (unfortunately I didn’t really get to catch who they were), and had a selection of very well-produced, professional shorts that were filmed in Asia. From Visions to Reel: Living Legacy (horrible name for a program, sorry), from what I gathered, is a showcase of mostly emerging filmmakers touching upon more Asian/Asian diaspora experiences – which also meant that a few of the films in that program were a bit pretentious and had some very fresh-out-of-film school-esque feelings to them. Some of the selected films had already screened elsewhere at prestigious festivals, like at Tribeca and Sundance, too. I’m not surprised that there were some absolutely amazing films in the bunch! Out of all of the films screened during those two fantastic programs, here were my top three:
“Endling,” directed by Kelly Yu
Li-Wei: Part “documentary” and part folktale, Yu’s “Endling” takes place in a world where goldfish are on the verge of extinction. The very last goldfish in the world is in the hands of an older Asian man (Dennis Dun) who cares for it, and a documentary crew follows him around as he shows them the day-to-day process of keeping it alive and happy.
It’s a wonderfully whimsical film with characters that sparkle and bring this ridiculous world to life. Dennis Dun (!!!), who is best known for iconic scene-stealing turns in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China and Prince of Darkness, returns to the screen here and absolutely kills it as the lonely, wonderfully weird caretaker. With the ascent of Ke Huy Quan in the public eye in recent years, I’d say that Dennis Dun deserves another filmic renaissance as well. Heartwarming, hilarious, and lovely, “Endling” is an amazingly well-conceptualized vision that already feels like it’s the next big thing.
“Vox Humana,” directed by Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan
Li-Wei: So you like world-building, don’t you? If you’re looking for a film with a “proper” storyline that asks and answers all of the questions that it poses, this is not the short for you. Right at the beginning of “Vox Humana,” we get plopped into a world that feels familiar but is strangely detached. Forces of nature shake the screen, horses run abound, and wild men with their own oblique language intrigue the film’s viewer.
“Vox Humana” works a bit better as a music video or an atmospheric experiment, but what little snippets we get of the world Eblahan builds leaves a lot of room for your imagination to fill in the blanks. Long after the credits rolled and the sounds of Maria BC faded out (yes, there was a licensed Maria BC song in there), I was left to wonder what it was I had just watched. Was it a piece about environmental decay, an existential depiction of language, or just a pure fever dream?
I think the best films leave you intrigued, and “Vox Humana” definitely achieves that.
“CHECK PLEASE,” directed by Shane Chung
Li-Wei: If you haven’t guessed it already, I’m a big genre fan (see: me fanboying over Dennis Dun a bit in my blurb above). Chung’s “CHECK PLEASE” is all of that and then more.
Staged as a confrontation between a Korean American and a Korean work acquaintance who are fighting to treat the other to dinner (Asian/Asian Americans will know about this familiar practice in their day-to-day lives), Chung uses a familiar Asian trope and pushes it to the cartoonish extreme. As the two fight for the paycheck each other using everyday objects like chopsticks, Korean BBQ grills, and even sopping wet kimchi, it’s hard not to laugh out loud at how ridiculously the short plays out. “CHECK PLEASE” is clearly inspired by Asian action flicks with its fun choreography and occasionally cheesy one-liners — so much so that I wouldn’t mind watching it over and over again.
It’s Asian politeness to the extreme! Imagine how much more fun the world would be if an all-out duel was how we settled who gets to grab the check in our day-to-day lives… restaurants would be much more interesting place, that’s for sure.
The atmosphere!
Li-Wei: Although I only really attended one day at the festival, the entire time I was there the theater was buzzing. Post-screening, people who worked on the films that were just screened stayed around and mingled with everyone – so much so that staff definitely had to corral everyone over to the lobby multiple times. It’s always fun to attend a festival where everyone was excited to be there, excited to share about their next project, and finally find a sense of community in a place as isolating and large as LA.
The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival took place from May 1 – May 7th, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. The photos in this article are provided courtesy of LAAPFF.
Festival Pages: Website