Order your 2023 Silicon Valley Asian Pacific In-person FilmFest tickets here

For tickets to our online festival, go to

SVAPFF Online Festival, October 20- 29, 2023

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In Person Schedule:

Friday, October 20, OPENING NIGHT - includes bento dinner and gift
6:30 pm - 10:00 pm 

Opening Short film, Gifts are my Love Language 

Samantha makes it clear on how she should be celebrated on her birthday and her boyfriend. David starts off strong. It’s success after success but when David gives Samantha the perfect gift, it all goes wrong.

Q&A Guests- Director, Jonathan De Guzman II

Feature Film, Love in Taipei

Based on the New York Times bestseller "Loveboat, Taipei" by Abigail Hing Wen, the film tells the story of the young American Ever Wong (Liao), whose summer takes an unexpected turn when her parents surprise her with a trip to Taipei for a cultural immersion program, during which she falls in love.

Q&A Guests- New York Times Bestselling Author and filmmaker, Abigail Hing Wen

Evening Emcee and Moderator: NBC Bay Area Reporter, Robert Handa

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Saturday, October 21
10:00 am - 12:00 pm  

Opening Short: Year of the Rat

Yearning for companionship but unable to connect with her daughter, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant turns to the unlikely world of online dating.

Feature Film: Starring Jerry as Himself

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.

Panel Discussion - Moderator, Host "Silicon Valley Insider" Radio Show and Podcast, Keith Koo, ; Director, Year of the Rat, Ricky Qi; Retired Senior Inspector, SF District Attorney's Office, Jason Collom ; Executive Director of Yu-Ai-Kai, Jennifer Masuda

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12:30 pm - 2:30 pm 

Feature Film: A Great Divide

Seen through the eyes of a Korean American family that leaves the California Bay Area for small-town Wyoming after experiencing devastating loss, A GREAT DIVIDE addresses the emotional and psychological impact of racism and xenophobia on Asian Americans, the loneliness and sacrifice of immigrant sojourners and the generational burden of expectations that weigh on their children. But it's also a story about a family repairing itself after tragedy, about a young man breaking out of his shell and finding love, about reconciliation and redemption.

Q&A Guests-  Director, Jean Shim; Actor, Emerson Min; Actor, West Mulholland

Q&A Moderator-  founder and Executive Director of AAPI Youth Rising, Mina Na Rae Fedor

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3:00 pm - 5:00 pm 

Bay Area Shorts and Selected Favorites 

Convenience    ROOFTOP IN CHINATOWN    Dawn of Skates    Bon Odori    Pulp    Stain Resistant    Legacy    Nanitic    Party Favor

Convenience - Two convenience store employees work a graveyard shift. An idle conversation ignites into an impassioned reflection on their current lifestyle, aspirations, and future together.  Q&A Guest- Director, Justin Tran

From a Rooftop in Chinatown - “Rooftop in Chinatown” is a love letter to San Francisco’s historic Chinatown, where rapper and singer Son of Paper grew up and has taken much artistic inspiration for his music. Experience the vibrancy of the people and places of Chinatown in a fast-paced tour filled with hidden gems, including the coveted Cameron House rooftop. Q&A Guest- Director, Jason Wu

Dawn of Skates - A Vietnamese-American teenager finds her confidence through a great mentor and the art of rollerskating. Q&A Guest- Director, Mitch Truong

Bon Odori - Bon Odori is a 3D/2D animated short film that delves into the heart of Obon, a Japanese Buddhist festival that celebrates the memories of ancestors and loved ones who have passed away. The film's title, which translates to "Bon Dance," refers to the traditional folk dancing performed during the festival. The story follows Kai, a young Japanese American boy struggling with the loss of his grandmother, and trying to navigate his first Obon without her. Q&A Guest- Director, Trent Osaki

Pulp - A first-generation college senior confronts the realities of generational trauma, while preparing an original piece for an upcoming violin audition. Q&A Guest- Director, Harsimran Sandhu

Stain Resistant - This is a story of two women, former classmates from Delhi, who reconnect in Silicon Valley in their forties, after taking completely different paths through life. Sunny came to the US after an arranged marriage and raised a family in Silicon Valley. Tara, a single New Yorker, is a successful journalist content with fulfilling her career ambitions. After being ghosted for a decade, Sunny meets with Tara on the very day that her husband, a tech CEO, is caught in a sting operation. Unbeknownst to each other, both women were abused by the same man, and they had remained silent for different reasons. On this day, one has chosen to fight back while the other contemplates giving up. With words remaining unspoken, they recognize each other’s trauma and resolve to liberate themselves of their stains. Q&A Guest- Director, Shruti Tewari

Legacy - A look at generational trauma and triumph through poetry and pictures. Q&A Guest- Director, Giovannie Espiritu

Nanitic - na·nit·ic / adjective: "The first brood of worker ants produced by a queen ant using only the reserved nutrition in her body. Nanitics shoulder the initial fate of the colony and are often underfed due to the conditions in colony building. Thus, nanitics may be smaller in size from later workers ants to optimize the survival of the group..." — But what happens to the colony when the queen dies? Had the nanitics done enough?

Party Favor - A Filipino-American woman grapples with going behind her strict Catholic sister's back to buy condoms for her 14-year-old niece. Q&A Guest- Director, Yasmine Gomez

Q&A Moderator- Local artist, civic participation activist, entrepreneur, Ellina Yin

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5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

- Feature Film: Chindia 

When an American couple tie the knot for all the wrong reasons, their ‘Chindian’ parents come untie things, the Asian way! Veer, an unemployed immigrant, is lying on railroad tracks, contemplating suicide. His life is in the shits! Veer lost his job, his house, and now his parents are coming to America to meet his fiancé, who just dumped him. Tied to the same tracks by a vicious mob, Summer, an investigative journalist, cries for help. Veer manages to save Summer but misses the last train to end his life. Feeling obligated to return the favor, Summer calls upon her friend, Mark, who suggests Veer and Summer get ‘married’ as a temporary solution to their problems. As they get hitched at the courthouse, Summer runs into her cousin, Lilly, who snitches and spreads the surprising news to the family. Their parents arrive on the same day and must coexist in the same place. A recipe for disaster!

Q&A Guests- Director, Sikandar Sidhu; Actor, Shruti Tewari; Actor, Lee Chen; Actor, AJ Singh; Composer, Marco Valerio Antonini; Cinematographer, Ino Yang Popper

Moderator- Local filmmaker, writer and entrepreneur, Salia Kariat

MC- Bay Area Fitness and Spiritual Coach, Dimple Bindra

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8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Feature Film: Shortcomings

Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.

Q&A Moderator- Stephanie Yang

Q&A Panelists- Playright and Director, Jeffrey Lo; Associate Professor and Program Coordinator for AA Studies at SJSU, Yvonne Y. Kwan; Marketing Executive, Eric Toda

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10:45 am - 1:00 pm

Opening Short: 1970s: The Fight For Little Tokyo

Compilation of activist video shot by Duane Kubo and Visual Communications covering the redevelopment conflict and union organizing in Little Tokyo during the 1970s

Feature Film: Hito Hata: Raise the Banner 

A landmark project directed by Robert A. Nakamura and Duane Kubo, HITO HATA: RAISE THE BANNER (1980) is the first feature-length film made by and about Asian Pacific Americans. Following a feisty first-generation Japanese American elderly’s life laboring on the transcontinental railroad and struggles in preserving the Little Tokyo community, the film captures the contributions and hardships of Japanese Americans from the turn-of-the-20th century.

This 4K Restoration is funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation, with additional support from funders of the VC Archives (Aratani Foundation, California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, California Humanities, Haynes Foundation, and Mellon Foundation).
Q&A Guests-  Director, Duane Kubo

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1:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Local Legends Documentaries

Because of You, I Am  *  BENKYODO: The Last Manju Shop in J-Town  *  Silk and Iron  *  Drawn from Life: The Creative Legacy of Flo Oy Wong  *  Becoming Yamazushi

Because of You, I Am is a short documentary film about PJ & Roy Hirabayashi, two quietly radical Japanese American taiko drummers who defied traditional cultural expectations in their quest for identity and purpose. Together, they spent over five decades using the drum as a platform to catalyze social change, build community from the ground up, and champion a new category of Asian American music despite facing the unrelenting challenges of anti-Asian hate, racial injustice, and cultural appropriation.  Q&A Guests- PJ and Roy Hirabayashi

BENKYODO: The Last Manju Shop in J-Town – Ricky and Bobby Okamura, the current owners of Benkyodo mochi shop, established in 1906, make a difficult decision to close their family business. The Japanese pastry shop, a landmark for Japanese/Asian Americans in the Bay Area, is one of two mochi shops currently open in the San Francisco-Bay Area. Currently 115 years old, the business has endured the anti-Asian laws of the early 20th century, Japanese internment, Redevelopment of the 1960s and continues to weather San Francisco’s notorious high costs of living. Q&A Guests- Directors, Tadashi Nakamura and Eryn Kimura

Silk and Iron - A short film spotlighting Gary Llamido, an antiques collector and restoration artist. We have an intimate conversation with Gary on the important role that Samurai Armor has played in his life, as well as the impact it continues to have on the world. Q&A Guest- Director, Kee Streater Heywood and Producer, Mohammad Sigari

Drawn from Life: The Creative Legacy of Flo Oy Wang- As the sixth daughter of Chinese immigrants living in Oakland’s Chinatown in the 1940s-1960s, FLO OY WONG was determined to break free of a life of pre-destined invisibility. She began her art career at the age of forty. Her poetry career started at seventy-five. Now eighty-five, her life comes full circle when The Community Rejuvenation Project proposes to paint a mural at 723 Webster, the former site of her family’s restaurant, The Great China. Flo’s beginnings in Oakland’s Chinatown come to life once more— this time through the eyes of another artist. Q&A Guests- Artist, Flo Oy Wong and Director, Andi Wong

Becoming Yamazushi - A son honoring family legacy discovers how art can be a champion for healing, lost history, and cultural liberation, as he takes us on the poetic journey of Yamazushi.

Moderator- NBC Bay Area Reporter, Mike Inouye

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4:00 pm - 5:00 pm 

Special presentation of Documentary Short, Every Day After

Growing up in Masbate Province in the Philippines, Jary is neglected and shunned since the moment of his birth for one reason-- his appearance.

His older sister, Jessa protects Jary through his early years, then takes him in as a young teen, to raise him alongside her own two children in a fragile house on a hill. Jessa seeks out the medical care Jary has been denied since birth. And more, the support to begin his physical and emotional recovery.

Every Day After is a 35-minute documentary film that provides a more nuanced look at the complexities of the healing process we don’t often see. And honors the invisible labor of a sister whose love and action make it possible for Jary to experience the everyday joys and struggles of growing up.

Q&A Guest- Executive Producer, David A. Liu

Moderator- NBC Bay Area News Anchor, Janelle Wang

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To purchase tickets for our online films, please go here: https://svapfilmfest2023.eventive.org/welcome

-All films and guests are subject to change without notice-