3 Favorite Films from the 2025 Austin Asian American Film Festival

Designed by local artist Kengo Hioki, better known as Peelander-Yellow, this year’s bright yellow poster for the Austin Asian American Film Festival (AAAFF) perfectly encompasses the theme of playful rebellion. 

For Hanna Huang, executive director of the film festival, playful rebellion is “like finding joy in the work you’re doing.” While she acknowledges that community work can be hard and come with its own difficulties, she explains, “[This year’s theme is about] enjoying the work … and progressing our community and building it and putting it together.” 

At a time when funding for the arts, among other things, feels uncertain, playful rebellion feels hopeful — and so is AAAFF’s outlook for the near future. After celebrating its sweet 16 last year, AAAFF aims to build institutional status as part of the advocacy Hanna and her team hope to achieve, especially as funds are secured from a multiyear grant.

Hanna shares that connection and community drive the work and get you through challenges, and many filmmakers throughout the festival echoed the same sentiment. While films covered a wide range — from Wednesday night’s opening film “All That We Love” that sent all pet owners home teary-eyed, to Sunday’s closing night story “Sunshine” about a young gymnast who finds out she’s pregnant the week of national tryouts — all touched on these ideas.

Here are some favorites that stood out. 

Festival Favorites

“An Ongoing List of Things Found in the Library Book Drop, Usually Being Used as Bookmarks” 

One of the shortest films at AAAFF, this film probably boasts the longest title and closed a lineup in a block highlighting Texas short filmmakers. At three minutes, “An Ongoing List of Things Found in the Library Book Drop, Usually Being Used as Bookmarks” manages to pack a lot of different stories into one. Directed by Kayla Abuda Galang, the short film was filmed in one day at a local public library and is based on a poem by Sam Treviño. 

The film’s title suggests exactly what you’d expect. A library worker imagines the stories behind the abandoned items he finds tucked between returned book pages. Some of the items are relatively tame — an orange peel, googly eyes, a tea bag. Others are a little more humorous and odd, like “love letters, some surrounded by an aura of violence.” As the list grows longer, the audience gets glimpses of these stories coming to life in the library setting. For example, an ultrasound conjures up a scene of a couple at an appointment among the bookshelves, and later, we see the child, now a toddler, running among the stacks. 

“I think a lot of the magic [from making this film] came from really harnessing our communities and old friends and family [who] came together for this,” Kayla shares of the creation. Though the ideas behind the short are simple, this simplicity makes them accessible, relatable, and even more meaningful. 

The project was a nice reminder that films don’t always have to take two hours to share a poignant idea. Everyone has a story to tell, no matter how big — and there are funny, heartwarming moments of humanity everywhere we look. 

“Chinatown Cha Cha”

From the opening of “Chinatown Cha Cha,” we’re invited to take a journey through space and time. As archival clips roll, a narrator introduces a group of Chinese American showgirls from the 1940s — San Francisco Chinatown dancers who performed at popular Asian-owned nightclubs in the city. But as time went on and clubs closed, the film asks, “Where had all the showgirls gone?” 

Cut to 2019 in Las Vegas. One of these showgirls, known as “China’s most daring dancing doll,” Coby Yee is now 92 and performing at the Burlesque Hall of Fame. Even at this age, her costumes and performances are just as vibrant as they were back then. 

“I wanted to research Chinese women who [were] active in early 20th century performing arts because I was fascinated by stories of Anna May Wong. I always thought, you know, there must be more Chinese American women [who were] not being heard,” director and producer Luka Yuanyuan Yang shares. “And [so I] started with research digging into different archives, trying to find oral histories and I realized, wow, there were actually a lot of Chinatown nightclubs in San Francisco from [the] 1940s to 1960s.”

In an interview with SFGATE, Luka highlights her thoughts that an archive belongs to the public, rather than under the ownership of the documentary filmmaker making a project. She elaborates on this idea in a post-screening Q&A: “I think this [shows] how difficult [it was] to find this archive, because so many … were not being preserved well. And they’re lost in time … I think it’s so important to keep a record, to have these archives so we can remember and celebrate in future.”

“Sometimes, when histories are not being preserved, they become urban legends,” Luka continues. “They become almost fiction. Very often they were based on facts at the very beginning, but because the archive was lost or because [of] the Chinese Exclusion Act and all these different footage reasons and historic reasons, they became fiction.”

While the documentary explains a lot of the history of San Francisco’s Chinatown nightclubs and their dancers, the audience gets introduced to the Grant Avenue Follies, a group founded in 2004 made up of senior performers led by Cynthia Yee, another former nightclub dancer. Other key players are introduced, but Coby is the center of much of the film, and we get to understand her backstory and how she got into burlesque dancing. We also get glimpses of her life at 92. 

Coby still loves dancing, and she makes her own elaborate costumes and clothes full of color and lots of open shoulders. She’s a delight — funny, unapologetic, and bright. A true star. Her partner Stephen King, who makes collages with tiny photos of her on top of mountains and vlogs of their travels, complements her perfectly. 

In one scene, as Stephen speaks about the idea of legacy and being forgotten, Coby sits in the background tapping away at the computer playing Solitaire, in her own world. As Stephen concludes his existential speech, the computer sings triumphantly in the background as the words “You won!” appear on the screen. The comedic timing is impeccable and the audience roars with laughter.

We follow the Follies as they travel to Havana, Cuba, and Shanghai, China, on tour. The scenes of the Follies interacting with their older Cuban Chinese audience is touching. Though they may not speak the same primary languages, the two are united by Cantonese and their Chinese customs. As the Follies perform tap and burlesque for the audience, several of the Cuban Chinese organizers share their talents in Cantonese opera. 

Other dancers may be better, Cynthia shares, but the Follies have their gimmick: their age.

Though the film gets into the controversies of show business among Asian immigrants and identity, “Chinatown Cha Cha” for me was a beautiful homage to history and aging. At one point, one of the Follies vocalizes that life doesn’t stop beginning when you turn 88. And it’s true — age doesn’t stop the group from doing what they love. Even up until the week of her death in 2020, Coby was still dancing. For 85 minutes, the Follies dazzled in the spotlight and captivated our theater. While many were trailblazers in their own right as Chinatown showgirls, Luka’s film allows their legacy to live on, showing how they’re still blazing a path forward now.

“Paying for It”

An adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, “Paying for It” begins in the late ’90s and follows Chester and Sonny (fictionalized versions of Chester and director Sook-Yin Lee), a couple in a long-term, committed romantic relationship. When Sonny asks to redefine their relationship, Chester makes a decision to begin sleeping with sex workers and discovers a new kind of intimacy in the process. 

The film is fairly linear, starting in 1999 and ending in the early 2000s. Each of Sonny’s and Chester’s respective relationships are marked by titles with their partners’ names on the screen, essentially breaking up the story into episodes or chapters that mirror the graphic novel’s style. 

But, Sook-Yin acknowledges, there were some distinct differences between the two mediums. Originally, Chester’s novel wanted to protect all identities and details of the sex workers he slept with, so many are framed out of the panels. “I knew for the movie I wanted to illuminate who [these characters] were,” the director explains. “And instead of putting the politics first and sort of didactic in that way, having [it] there in the internal skeleton structure, but then really telling a movie about people who make choices and who are flawed.”

Sex is a large part of the film, of course, but there’s nothing really sexy about the film. There’s quite a bit of nudity shown, but Sook-Yin says, “[It’s] very natural … You know what it’s like to be naked in the shower. [It’s not a] scandal.” For context, she adds, “In [the graphic novel], it’s like [the sex workers are] across the room. We’re never in the sheets with people. It’s kind of like we’re National Geographic.” 

The film feels that way, too. 

Sex scenes come across as sometimes silly, but mostly methodical. Instead, the interactions outside of that — for example, as Chester becomes more open with sharing his real identity, or when he gives one of the sex workers a copy of his latest comic — are the ones that feel truly intimate.

Sometimes, it’s hard to follow what Sonny and Chester are to each other. At one point, both are in an open relationship, the next, they’re roommates. By the end, they still love each other as friends. Their status remains unclear, but that undefined position is what adds to the messiness, rawness, and realness of the story. 

“Chester and I greatly loved one another, and we were able to navigate those choices. Oftentimes, in movies, we see either you’re together, you’re apart. You break up, you’re together. You live happily ever after,” Sook-Yin brings up in the post-movie Q&A. “Real life is not really like that, and so we can’t make these decisions and we did make the decisions. We never really even broke up. It was sort of a transformation of our relationship, and yet the profound love only became deeper.” 

Sook-Yin describes Chester’s original graphic novel, which was published in 2011, as “a political treatise on the decriminalization of consensual sex work,” adding how the topic is closely related to queer liberation. “[Chester] had the wherewithal to go and explore that world, and he saw the lack of worker rights, labor rights that sex workers have to operate within [that] put them in harm’s way.”

Sook-Yin describes making the film as a true community effort. As the director, she took the time to conduct research and consult with sex workers. “I like seeing depictions, more nuances of sex workers. Oftentimes, in movies, we see a sex worker and she dies or she’s a victim. Not all sex workers are victims that need to be saved, and not all clients are villains to be loathed,” she points out. 

Though it also took some time to get Chester to open up about translating his experiences into a film, Sook-Yin ended up working with the cartoonist as well to develop the story. Panels from the original graphic novel are also shown alongside illustrations of the cast in the end credits. 

In addition to collaborating with others, Sook-Yin had to combat the challenges of writing a fictionalized version of herself. In real life, when she suggested opening up the relationship, Sook-Yin admits she was jealous and afraid of losing Chester. While she included some of that in Sonny, she had to let it “mingle with reality and fiction.” 

There are a lot of things that separate Sonny from Sook-Yin — and from Chester. Throughout the film, these are highlighted by their professions, their personalities, and even the film’s soundtrack. Both of them end up going through different journeys around intimacy and romance. While Chester is reluctant about seeing other people, even as his relationship with Sonny becomes open, his views around intimacy eventually change as he stops seeking romantic love. Sonny is the opposite where, for most of the film, she focuses on pursuing romantic relationships.

“What’s happening here now in the United States, in Canada, [is that] fundamental rights, even reproductive rights are diminishing … so there’s a lot of interesting ideas woven into the fabric of this sweetheart film,” Sook-Yin says. While the accompanying Q&A helped connect a lot of these overarching ideas for me, overall the film depicts real, honest intimate relationships by showing the humor, complications, and emotions people can go through — and through that, subtly accomplishes its goal: humanizing sex work.

Cover image credit Roger Ho. Courtesy of Austin Asian American Film Festival.