Private Project

One Day You Are Not Here

A daughter attempts to confront her immigrant dad about the ways he's failed as a father. In the process, she sees his pain for the first time.

  • Nancy Ma
    Director
  • Nancy Ma
    Producer
  • Nancy Ma
    Editor
  • Junting Zhou
    Editor
  • Jeremy Emery
    Sound Editor
  • Cora Chung
    Composer
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    有一天，你不在
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short
  • Genres:
    Family
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 6 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    August 1, 2023
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    Chinese
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Nancy Ma

Nancy Ma is a first generation Asian American actor, playwright, and filmmaker. Her work is often a return to and a reimagination of home, and often that involves excavating personal painful and unprocessed memories of people and places. Common threads in her work include straddling cultural and socioeconomic classes, grief, and family. Her solo show about growing up in Chinatown has been performed at schools and festivals around the country. As an actor, Nancy has been seen in The Joy Luck Club (Sierra Madre Playhouse), Three Little Girls Down a Well (The Public), Hacks (HBO), Barry (HBO), Bull (CBS). Nancy’s writing has been supported by The New Harmony Project, Asian American Arts Alliance, The Latino Theater Company, Fresh Ground Pepper, WhoHaHa. Nancy currently facilitates storytelling with The Moth and Young Storytellers. Her work and her life focus on finding the funny, intimate and redemptive in forgotten places.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

有一天，你不在 (one day you are not here) explores intergenerational care through my relationship with my aging immigrant dad. James Baldwin wrote, “I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.” I owe my dad an opportunity for him to be understood. To no one’s surprise, Baldwin is indeed a prophet. When hate fades, what I found was my fear of losing my dad, without him knowing how much I care about him. My parents often say they sacrificed much so I could have a better life. This work is proof that time spent together to understand each other is worth more than anything money can buy. Time together was what they gave up when I was younger, and now that I’m older, I want to give that back to them.

This film also aims to archive the Chinese Hoisan dialect. Hoisan was the first language of the Chinatowns in America. Because of gentrification, the devaluation of multigenerational living, and the prioritization of Chinese Mandarin as the “official Chinese language,” Hoisan is at risk of disappearing. Losing a language is losing one’s roots. I hope this primes others to practice and proudly speak this dialect.