In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, a few community leaders approached me about a documentary idea on Asian American mental health. At the time, Asian Americans were fighting two viruses: the COVID-19, of course, and the rising Anti-Asian hate crimes. 

For five years, we have travelled across the country gaining access to the experiences and struggles of our community members that are largely neglected or shunned. We were alarmed by how firmly mental illness is gripping our community everywhere and anytime, and yet, so little help is on the way.  We were touched by how eagerly our members decided to share their stories and their pent-up emotions. These are truly powerful stories, with so much drama, human cost, inspiration, and impact. Today, I still wonder why our members, from a community in which mental illness is highly and prohibitively stigmatized, would come forward to recount and re-live those many intimate moments that could make them vulnerable and could re-trigger their mental illness. 

I know, for the sake of helping our community combat mental illness, they were willing to take risks. I’m so grateful to them. 

I have my own challenges. The project became deeply personal. In the documentary film business, we are often mindful of the fine line between providing a voice and becoming a voice. Documentary filmmakers, for better or worse, are supposed to be “a fly on the wall.” Otherwise, you become subjective and biased. But I often found myself tearing up with my participants during their difficult moments; I found myself asking questions as if to my children, the questions that had never gotten asked some 20 years before; I found myself processing the same experience and emotions at the workplace as an Asian American professional.  

They are telling my stories and our stories. Ultimately, what we were capturing is a collective experience, identity, and destiny.

When a director writes a statement, they have arrived at a point where it is reflective, suggesting the end of a journey.  It is true for the film and for my own mental health quest. But there is a sense of incompletion, a sense of a long journey that asks for patience, resilience, and resolve. And it takes time. I hope our film will serve as a good messenger in our war on mental illness.

With care,