In this screening intended for high school students (but is suitable for older viewers, too), each of these six films asks questions of perseverance in times of personal or communal strife or displacement. The stop-motion animated Spring Roll Dream (which debuted at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival) finds a Vietnamese American mother confronting a culture she has largely left behind. Conversations at the Register and In Living Memory take a look at the familial and communal impact of two Southeast Asian American-owned businesses in Southern California. 

A young Vietnamese American teenager seeks to more fully express herself in Hyphen, despite the linguistic barriers she faces in communicating with her grandmother. The Waves Now Calm is a personal reflection of the plight of the Boat People, as well as a document of a Malaysian fisherman’s reflections of the former refugee camp on Bidong Island. Lastly, Good Chips sees a Vietnamese Irish family operate a Chinese food truck in Dublin to make ends meet, with their young daughter finding friendship with an Irish boy. – Eric Nong