Ashima

When I met Ashima back in 2012, I instantly wished I’d had someone like her to relate to, and aspire to be like as a kid. Immigrating from Japan at 8, I’d struggled with English and was bullied for being different living in Kentucky and Michigan throughout my adolescence in the ’90s. I also thought of thousands of Japanese children struggling with hikikomori, a social phenomenon where children severely withdraw and isolate themselves from the world, and also how my American peers dealt with their own challenges with their limited role models.

In recent years with the MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter movement, ongoing mass shootings, and the brutal anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, a society fraught with hatred, fragility, and prejudice for our many differences has been revealed. It has also called out a dire need for change.

ASHIMA explores the coming-of-age story about a painfully shy and introverted young girl with her intense and isolating elderly immigrant parents, struggling to find her own voice. It explores the complex reality of being a third-culture Gen Z kid, caught between two worlds and facing barriers of language, affection, wealth, and harsh expectations. The film examines the obsession of being successful in modern-day sports, being an Asian American female athlete in a white male-dominated sport, and how celebrity plus an incessant drive to win and please others can diminish mental health. It questions whether these achievements are worth it and what it can cost, especially for young people living under the microscope of social media.

In the media, a recent push for “diversity” has taken center stage. But it better serves us to continuously study how it translates to action and impact. We’ve reached a point where simply having a BIPOC face or making content that superficially includes a marginalized narrative does not cut it. We’ve reached a point where marketing quotas and optics cannot replace authenticity and substance. What transforms a viewer’s heart and thus their mind starts with something real, specific, and honest.

Storytelling can cultivate empathy and bridge cultures. It’s more important than ever to have authentic diverse representation on the screen, in addition to our physical world. Through film, we can show that Asian American stories or stories about women need not include narrow and dehumanizing stereotypes like films of old. We hope through showing nuanced depictions of those who are female-identifying, immigrants, Asians & Asian Americans, audiences will be able to witness our inherent humanity and connect with our shared universal struggles.

“When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”― Orson Scott Card