This five-part series traces the story of Asian Americans, spanning 150 years of immigration, racial politics, international relations, and cultural innovation. It is a timely, clear-eyed look at the vital role that Asian Americans have played in defining who we are as a nation. Their stories are a celebration of the grit and resilience of a people that reflects the experience of all Americans.
Never underestimate an overachiever. To his classmates and teachers, high-schooler Ben Manibag appears to be the "model" student, a perfectionist and overachiever, destined for nothing less than graduating at the top of his class and then attending a prestigious college. But underneath this persona is a darker side, Ben and his bored high-school buddies lead double lives, flying high in a world of petty crime and material excess to ease the pressures of "being perfect."
Pakistan-born aspiring comedian Kumail connects with grad student Emily after a standup set. However, what they thought would be just a one-night stand blossoms into the real thing.
As a Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make a life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past as he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home.
"The Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi is seen as a paradise of leisure and pristine natural beauty, but these escapist fantasies obscure the colonial displacement, hyper-exploitation of workers and destructive environmental extraction that have actually shaped life on the island for the last 250 years. Cane Fire critically examines the island's history -- and the various strategies by which Hollywood has represented it--through four generations of director Anthony Banua-Simon's family, who first immigrated to Kauaʻi from the Philippines to work on the sugar plantations. Assembled from a diverse array of sources--from Banua-Simon's observational footage, to amateur YouTube travelogues, to epic Hollywood dance sequences -- Cane Fire offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the economic and cultural forces that have cast Indigenous and working-class residents as "extras" in their own story."-- Publisher's description from container.
When a renowned architecture scholar falls suddenly ill during a speaking tour, his son Jin finds himself stranded in Columbus, Indiana; a small Midwestern city celebrated for its many modernist buildings. Jin strikes up a friendship with Casey, an architecture enthusiast who works at the local library. As their intimacy develops, they explore both the town and their conflicted emotions: Jin's estranged relationship with his father, and Casey's reluctance to leave Columbus and her mother.
Wayne Wang's follow-up to his watershed indie Chan Is Missing is a family portrait that gracefully combines the director's signature gentle humanism and eye for poignant detail. Offering another fresh perspective on San Francisco's Chinese American community, Wang takes a bittersweet look at the generational pas de deux between an aging immigrant widow and her devoted daughter, torn between filial duty and her desires.
Recruited by an intelligence agency, outstanding martial arts student Bruce Lee participates in a brutal karate tournament hosted by the evil Han. Along with champions Roper and Williams, he uncovers Han₂s white slavery and drug trafficking ring located on a secret island fortress. In the exciting climax, hundreds of freed prisoners fight in an epic battle with Lee and Han locked in a deadly duel.
An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.
Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself. To assure her happiness, they gather under the joyful guise of an expedited wedding, uniting family members scattered among new homes abroad. As Billi navigates a minefield of family expectations and proprieties, she finds there's a lot to celebrate.
After his grandmother is diagnosed with cancer, a scheming young man moves in to care for her, motivated by a desire to secure her fortune for himself. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that winning Grandma's favor is no easy feat.
The hilarious and unapologetically explicit story of identity and self-discovery centers on four unlikely friends who embark on a once-in-a-lifetime international adventure. When Audrey's business trip to Asia goes sideways, she enlists the aid of Lolo, her irreverent, childhood best friend who also happens to be a hot mess; Kat, her college friend turned Chinese soap star; and Deadeye, Lolo's eccentric cousin. Their no-holds-barred, epic experience becomes a journey of bonding, friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery that reveals the universal truth of what it means to know and love who you are.
In the heart of Chinatown, New York, an ornery, chain-smoking, newly widowed 80-year-old grandma is eager to live life as an independent woman. When a local fortuneteller predicts a lucky day in her future, Grandma decides to head to the casino, only to land herself on the wrong side of luck, attracting the attention of some local gangsters. Desperate, Grandma employs the services of a bodyguard from a rival gang and soon finds herself right in the middle of a Chinatown gang war.
A laugh-out-loud real-life romantic comedy about Ravi Patel, an almost-30-year-old Indian American who enters a love triangle between the woman of his dreams and...his parents.
A tender and sweeping story about what roots people that follows a Korean-American family that moves to a tiny Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. The family home changes completely with the arrival of their sly, foul-mouthed, but incredibly loving grandmother. Amidst the instability and challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks, this film shows the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home.
"The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South come together in Mina Nair's Mississippi Masala, a luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot. Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, twentysomething Mina (Sarita Choudhury) spends her days cleaning rooms in an Indian-run motel in Mississippi. When she falls for the charming Black carpet cleaner (Denzel Washington), their passionate romance challenges the prejudices of both their families and exposes the rifts between the region's Indian and African American communities. Tackling thorny issues of racism, colorism, culture clash, and displacement with bighearted humor and keen insight, Nair serves up a sweet, sexy, and deeply satisfying celebration of love's power"--Container.
Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance. Includes French SDH.
After David Kim's sixteen-year-old daughter goes missing, a local investigation is opened and a detective is assigned to the case. But 37 hours later and without a single lead, David decides to search the one place no one has looked yet, where all secrets are kept today: his daughter's laptop. David must trace his daughter's digital footprints before she disappears forever.
Martial-arts master Shang-Chi confronts the past he thought he left behind when he's drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization.
When a Native Hawaiian hula dancer escaping her abusive boyfriend crashes her van into a mysterious homeless man, she finds herself flung into a surrealistic journey of self-exploration and reconnection to nature within the shadows of commercial Waikiki. This intimate narrative breaks down the enduring, stereotypical image of paradise to reveal a vulnerable and authentic portrait of indigeneity.
From Director Andrew Ahn comes a joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating the disasters and delights of family expectations, queerness, and cultural identity. Angela and her partner Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments but can't afford to pay for another round. Meanwhile their friend Min, the closeted scion of a multinational corporate empire, has plenty of family money but a soon-to-expire student visa. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee's IVF. But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min₂s skeptical grandmother flies in from Korea unannounced, insisting on an all-out wedding extravaganza. With a pitch-perfect cast of multigenerational talent, this fresh reimagining of Ang Lee's beloved, Award-winning rom-com teems with humor and heart in a poignant reminder that being part of a family means learning to both accept and forgive.
A Filipina teen from a small Texas town fights to pursue her dreams as a country music performer while having to decide between staying with her family and leaving the only home she has known.