2020 Festival Schedule and Tickets

Wednesday, February 27

Creative Leadership Talkback / Lunch & Festival Kickoff - 1:30-3:30PM

Zeppelin Station​
3501 Wazee St.
Denver, CO 80216

​Our festival opens with an introduction to the women in our Denver community! Meet creative leaders from Denver Film Society, Empowerful Changes, WIFMCO, Denver Zoo, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and Mudra Dance Studio! Ask our panelists questions and stay for networking at the end of our talks! Lunch and drinks available for purchase from the food stalls inside Zeppelin Station.

​This event is free and open to the public! RSVP to be entered into a raffle drawing​​ for a free ticket to one of our film festival screenings!

Thursday, February 20
​2020 Opening Reception

Sie FilmCenter 
2510 E Colfax Ave, Denver, CO 80206
Our Opening Night and Festival Kickoff is sponsored by Dae Gee Korean BBQ! Join us for a plant-based food reception and have your photo taken on our Red Carpet!
Festival Pass - Includes Opening Night and tickets to all 10 festival film & shorts blocks!

Opening Film: The Wandering Chef - 7:00PM
Colorado Premiere
Thursday, February 20

(2019 - Documentary)

Running Time
1h 27m

Country / Language
South Korea / Korean

Director
Hye-Ryeong Park
​
Starring
Im Jiho
Synopsis
Celebrity chef Jiho Lim, better known as the “Wandering Chef” travels from one end of the Korean peninsula to the other, in search of natural ingredients with medicinal properties. He journeys through different landscapes, meeting diverse people, and feeding a multitude of communities. All of his sources come from mother nature itself, who was his nurturer due to his unusual upbringing. He grew up sleeping on her soil using leaves as his blanket and eating herbs for survival. But the pain of having had no one to call ‘Mother’ was a trauma he carried for years. Until one day, he meets someone very special on the road that leads to the most important cooking of his lifetime.​

Friday, February 21

Lucky Grandma - 7:00PM
Colorado Premiere

(2019)

​Running Time
1h 40m

Country / Languages
USA / Mandarin, English, Cantonese
​
Director
Sasie Sealy

Starring
Tsai Chin, Hsiao-Yuan Ha, Michael Tow, Woody Fu, Wai Ching Ho​

Synopsis
Set in New York City's Chinatown, an ornery, chain-smoking Chinese grandma goes all in at the casino, landing herself on the wrong side of luck - and in the middle of a gang war.
"Veteran actress Tsai Chin (THE JOY LUCK CLUB, A LEADING MAN, CASINO ROYALE) turns in a compelling and funny performance as an ornery, chain-smoking Chinese grandmother with a small-time gambling habit. She cherishes her independence, which worries her family. When a local fortune-teller predicts a most auspicious day in her future, Grandma decides to work off that newly acquired good luck and head straight to the casino. She goes “all in” and lands herself on the wrong side of luck. She soon becomes entrenched in the the middle of a NYC Chinatown gang war. Realizing she cannot simply walk away from this turf war, Grandma decides to get some muscle and employs the services of a bodyguard from a rival gang.

Director Sasie Sealy brings to life a dark comedy about immigrant life, the vulnerabilities of aging, and an unexpected friendship. Set in alleyways, casino buses, and underground mahjong parlors with a cast of richly drawn characters, including Taiwanese breakout talent Corey Ha as the bodyguard. In the end, LUCKY GRANDMA is a love letter to Chinatown and an homage to all the badass ‘poh-pohs’ out there in Chinatowns everywhere." --Anderson Le, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

​Saturday, February 22

​In Search of Silence (Namdev Bhau) - 11:00AM

"THERE’S nothing quite like the deafening blare of beeping car horns to make you feel like you’re on the bustling streets of Mumbai, a city that is estimated to be nearly 50 times more noisy than London and New York.

If you’re visiting, these sounds will form the backdrop to your trip but imagine for one moment that you can’t escape them. That you’re entire life is plagued by the audio of urban life; traffic, music, conversations. Well that’s the situation protagonist Namdev Bhau (Namdev Gurav, who is a non-professional actor and an actual driver) finds himself in Dar Ghai’s ‘Namdev Bhau In Search Of Silence’ ...

Stylistically shot in widescreen, it’s a captivating watch with scene after scene of exquisite backdrops that have an almost mythical quality to them.

From empty streets lined with colourful prayer flags to huge expanses of land where the screen is filled with blue skies and barren grounds, upon which Namdev looks like a tiny ant; it’s a film made for the big screen where you can fully immerse yourself in the tranquillity of the settings.

Namdev’s plans to seek out silence sadly don’t all go to plan. On one occasion he’s faced with sharing a hotel room with a talkative girl scared of ghosts, then later his expedition is hijacked by a young boy who too is heading into the mountains and won’t stop chatting to him.

Namdev himself is a man of small words yet his character is one with maximum impact. ...

When out of the blue he delivers some lines, it’s surprising how emotional it becomes for the viewer, to see this man we’ve cared for from the moment we first met him, to finally communicating his thoughts.

Ukranian Director Dar Gai tells this unexpected story with an intimacy that’s hard to fault and it will no doubt have you contemplating what silence means to you." --Momtaz Begum-Hossain, Asian Culture Venture
(2018)

​Running Time
1h 24m

Country / Language
India / Hindi

Director
Dar Gai​
​
​Starring
Arya Dave, Namdev Gurav, Zoya Hussain

Synopsis
​Chauffeur Namdev can’t take noise Mumbai or his jabbering family anymore so he sets off on a quest for a fabled Himalayan retreat -Silent Valley. On the journey, he meets a chatterbox kid, who begins to show him a new perspective on life.

The Portrait (Ang Larawan) - 1:30PM
Saturday, February 22

​(2017 - Musical)

​Running Time
2h 4m

Country / Language
Philippines / Filipino, Tagalog

Director
Loy Arcenas
​
​Starring
Joanna Ampil, Rachel Alejandro, Paulo Avelino​

Synopsis
In a musical tale about standing together against materialism, two impoverished sisters anguish over whether or not to sell a painting, the final masterpiece by their recluse father. A bitter struggle for survival against betrayal set in pre-World War II Manila.

2020 Asian American Documentaries Showcase - 4:00PM
​Filmmaker Talkback
Saturday, February 22

Post-Screening Talkback / Meet the Filmmakers
Join us after our documentary showcase to hear from the filmmakers themselves!
Full Program & Film Descriptions

Palliative | Golden, CO (36 min)
John Beder and Donald Stader

Love Boat: Taiwan | San Francisco, CA (63 min)
Valerie Soe

Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams - 7:00PM
Saturday, February 22

​(2019 - Documentary)

​Running Time
1h 34m

Country / Language
USA / Japanese, English

Director
Ema Ryan Yamazaki
​Synopsis
Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in Koshien, Japan’s national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include US baseball stars Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. As popular as America’s World Series, the stakes are beyond high in this single-elimination tournament. For Coach Mizutani, cleaning the grounds and greeting guests are equally important as honing baseball skills, however, demonstrating discipline, sacrifice and unwavering dedication. Director Ema Ryan Yamazaki follows Mizutani and his team on their quest to win the 100th annual Koshien, and, in the process, goes beyond baseball to reveal the heart of the Japanese national character.

Sunday, February 23

2020 Colorado Showcase - 2:00PM
Filmmaker Talkback

CO Dragon Film Fest &
University of Colorado Denver
​College of Arts & Media present:

For Tashi | Colorado, 2019
​J. Cecilia Wu

Ma: Production Overview & Film Preview
Roma Sur

The Rock Within: Film Project Overview
Jessica McGaugh & Roma Sur

I Put the Bi in Bitter | Colorado, 2019
Marin Lepore

(people) of water | USA, 2019
Forest Woodward

Showcase will be followed by Q&A Session with our filmmakers!​

Overseas - 4:00PM
​Sunday, February 23

(2019 - Documentary)

Running Time
1h 30m

Country / Languages
Belgium, France / Filipino, English

Director
Sung-a Yoon
Synopsis
In The Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. To do so, they frequently leave their own children behind before embracing this big unknown. In a learning center dedicated to the domestic work, several candidates prepare themselves for homesickness and for the abuses that they will possibly endure. In role playing exercises, they play the worker's role as well as the one of the employer. The documentary Overseas brings to light the question of domestic slavery in our globalized world, while emphasizing those women's determination, their sisterhood, and the strategies they find to face the obstacles that awaits them in the near future.

Closing Film: To Live To Sing (Huo zhe chang zhe) - 7:00pm

Sunday, February 23
Synopsis
A Sichuan Opera troupe are faced with the demolition of their theater and dissolution.
(2019)

Running Time
1h 45m

Country / Language
China, France, Canada / Sichuan Mandarin

Director
Johnny Ma
​
​Starring
Xiaoli Zhao, Guidan Gan, Xihu Yan