11 emerging Asian women film and TV directors, from Pixar’s Domee Shi to Beef’s Hikari
- Chloé Zhao’s immensely successful 2020 drama Nomadland marked a turning point for Asian women directors, and there is no shortage of talent around
- From Domee Shi, the China-born animator of Pixar’s Turning Red, to Hikari, who directed three episodes of Netflix’s Beef, here are some of the ones to watch
When Chloé Zhao swept the awards season with her 2020 drama Nomadland, winning the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival and the best picture and best director Oscars at the Academy Awards, her success marked a major turning point for female filmmakers – and Asian representation – on the industry’s biggest stages.
With Michelle Yeoh’s history-making win in the best actress category at this year’s Oscars, female-fronted stories from Asia look to be finally getting the recognition they deserve.
This begs the question: where will the next award-winning storyteller come from? We look at 11 emerging female Asian filmmakers poised to reach a global audience.
1. Domee Shi
This often hilarious, occasionally frank tale of a Chinese teenager growing up in Toronto, Canada, who discovers that she can transform into a giant red panda when she hits puberty, was nominated for best animated feature at the Academy Awards earlier this year.
The director has since been promoted to vice-president of creative at Pixar and has confirmed that development has begun on her follow-up animated feature film.
2. Kamila Andini
Her 2021 film Yuni told the story of a promising teenager resisting family and tradition to avoid an arranged marriage.
It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, winning the Platform Prize.
3. Chie Hayakawa
After studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Tokyo-born Hayakawa led a number of short films that screened in Los Angeles, London and New York.
The film premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, receiving a special mention.
4. Mattie Do
Her 2012 debut, Chanthaly, was the country’s first horror film, and its first film by a woman director.
Do’s follow-up, 2016’s Dearest Sister, was Laos’ first – and to-date only – submission to the Academy Awards for best international feature film.
5. Huang Ji
After graduating from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy in 2007, Huang opted against following her contemporaries into China’s mainstream film industry, instead choosing to tell personal stories that address pressing social issues.
Together with husband and filmmaking partner Ryuji Otsuka, Huang has garnered international acclaim for her trilogy of films about China’s “left-behind children”, a generation abandoned by parents who moved to big cities in search of work.
6. Lulu Wang
It follows a Chinese-American woman who travels to China to visit her ailing grandmother, and struggles to navigate her unfamiliar homeland and its unusual traditions.
Wang was inspired to become a filmmaker while studying music and literature at Boston College, in the United States.
7. Hikari
Osaka-born writer-producer-director Hikari (real name Mitsuyo Miyazaki) has found critical and commercial success in both Japan and the US.
After a string of short films, which premiered at events including the Cannes and Tribeca film festivals, Hikari released her debut feature film: the Japanese-language drama 37 Seconds.
The film featured at the 2019 Berlinale, where it won the audience award and the International Confederation of Art Cinemas’ Art Cinema Award in the festival’s Panorama section.
8. Nida Manzoor
She cut her teeth writing for children’s television, before directing two episodes of sci-fi series Doctor Who.
Manzoor created the 2021 sitcom We Are Lady Parts, about a punk rock band composed of Pakistani Muslim women, which was nominated for two Baftas and won a Peabody award.
9. & 10. Wanweaw Hongvivatana and Weawwan Hongvivatana
Twin sisters Wanweaw and Weawwan Hongvivatana form a unique filmmaking duo, and fully embrace their special relationship and shared world view in their work.
After directing and appearing in the 2015 documentary Wish Us Luck, in which they travel together by rail from London to Bangkok, they honed their craft on Thai romcom fantasy series Great Men Academy.
Their 2023 debut feature film, You & Me & Me, is the story of adolescent twin sisters (both played by Thitiya Jirapornsilp) who fall for the same boy, only to discover that he cannot tell them apart.
Balancing crowd-pleasing genre beats with a fresh, semi-autobiographical perspective, the Hongvivatana sisters look set to take the world by storm.
11. Celine Song
The former playwright was born in Seoul, South Korea, but moved to Canada when she was 12.
She first garnered attention for her off-Broadway production of Endings, a play about Korea’s female haenyeo divers – who make their living harvesting molluscs and other sea life – and her multimedia reinterpretation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull performed through The Sims 4 computer game.
Past Lives, which is drawing positive comparisons to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as estranged friends who grew up together in Korea and are reunited as lovelorn adults in New York City.
