Ben, an ambitious Asian-American man shaped by his father’s immigrant experience, is visited by a familiar face on his way to the top. Insightful, poignant and beautifully observed.

Director Biography - Jackie Bao

Jackie is a Taiwanese-American visual filmmaker born and raised in Los Angeles. She is drawn towards highlighting experiences of connection and visualizing emotions to tell the story. She attended Bard College and American Film Institute.

Director Statement

Just Kids is an exploration of my personal and observed experience with intergenerational trauma. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “My mother, my father, they are in me. And when I look, I see myself in them.” The trauma of immigration, the lacks and fears of one generation, inherited by another, and preserved into a mentality of never having enough, never being enough. An invisible conversation linking generations. I wanted to find a way of healing the inner child within myself, within my father, and within my community. And at the least, of representing those conversations alongside the dreams and visions of Asian American identity I’ve felt but haven’t seen.