Lin Que Ayoung is an award-winning Black queer writer/director/producer who started her career as a Hip Hop Performer and Lyricist. As time progressed, misogyny and homophobia began to saturate the genre. Being in front of the camera only exacerbated the pressures of fitting into a predetermined box of stereotypes. After three major record deals, she decided to go back to school with the hope of transforming her verbal poetry into visual lyricism.
Upon obtaining an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Film Program, Lin Que’s a two-time winner of the BAFTA-NY Scholarship, the winner of the 2018 New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT) Scholarship, and the recipient of NYU’s 2018 First Run Film Festival Craft Award for the Directing of her film, The Dreamer/La Soñadora. The Dreamer was Lin Que’s 2nd year film at Tisch. It was also an Official Selection at HBO's 2019 New York Latino Film Festival. Before starting her 3rd year at NYU, she wrote her first feature-length script, Flesh, which was selected for the 2nd round of consideration for the 2019 Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program Development Track. Her 3rd year film, Nowhere, was exclusively distributed by Full Spectrum Features’ Our Right to Gaze: Black Film Identities Collection.
Lin Que's thesis film, Cracked, which won The Spike Lee Production Fund Grant, is based on true events that occurred to her when she was a child. At NYU's 2021 First Run Film Festival, Cracked won the 2nd Prize King Wasserman Award for Best Graduate Film. There, it also won Craft Awards for Cinematography and Acting. Cracked had its World Premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and has been officially selected to also compete at the Chicago International Film Festival, LA Shorts International Film Festival, HollyShorts, and more. Cracked was selected to be one of the five American Black Film Festival HBO Short Film Competition Finalist. Consequently, Cracked garnered a license agreement with HBO WarnerMedia and started airing February 2022 in celebration of Black History Month. Most recently, Lin Que was selected to be one of the four filmmakers for the 2022 Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellowship Program.
Lin Que Ayoung's films grapple with the tension between humanity’s beauty and its horror. She utilizes storytelling to cultivate her artistic boldness with the hope that her creative authenticity can touch and awaken the authenticity in others.