Take Me Home

Filmmaking is where I work out the conversations I’m afraid to have in real life - the grounded harrowing unknown.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago to white midwesterners who had four biological children and then adopted seven more (six of whom are Korean) and several with various disabilities. As the middle child, I’ve always been the one to help siblings face borderline personality, PTSD, depression, and cognitive/ developmental disability head on. Through my films, I am continually unpacking these experiences, examining cultural divides, intimate moments and transcending language. This project was born from my own thinking about how this world isn’t set up for my youngest sister, Anna, who was born with a Cognitive/Developmental Disability (CDD) that left her with little short term memory.

Anna is my favorite because she is spicy, empathetic, and always tells the truth. She will never be able to live alone. We both wonder what this will mean when she’ll no longer be able to live with our parents. One in four adults in the U.S. are disabled, yet our culture is still playing catch up to this fact.

The fictional story follows Anna, a cognitively disabled woman who is also a caregiver, striving for autonomy. The script does not overlook her disabilityand she never becomes a savant, a burden, nor is she objectified — she is simply one of us.

The story uplifts the many facets of Anna’s character: she is disabled, yes, but she’s also an Asian adoptee, a sister and a caregiver to her aging parents. The story touches on themes about the adopted family as its own unique balancing act without glorifying adoptee trauma or white saviorism.

Take Me Home empowers the disabled character and highlights the ethical dilemma of caregiving in the impossible American Healthcare system. The film asks, who gets to live a respectable life when they have limited abilities? For all the years of feeling helpless drowning in anxiety and doom around my love for my aging disabled family, this film is a way for me to try to change the fabric of the world. It’s a way to share my insight and perspective on the lives I see quietly suffer. TAKE ME HOME ends in a grounded magical realism that offers the viewer hope with a call to action to create a world where everyone’s needs are met.