Joy Dietrich

A rare view into the emotionally complex interior of young Asian American women, featuring a Korean adoptee who needs to come to terms with her damaged past.

Estranged from her adoptive parents, a filmmaker sets out to visit them after a 20-year absence. To observe how other adoptive families navigate challenges in the bonding process, she follows two fellow foreign-born adoptees as they undergo novel, sometimes controversial therapies to better connect with their American families.

A Tibetan-American filmmaker explores modes of resistance to Chinese occupation by speaking with activists across generations. A former Tibetan monk broke his vows and became a guerilla leader. The filmmaker's own mother followed the Dalai Lama's Middle Path and raised her family in America. A young Tibetan man attempted to self-immolate in 2006. How does the filmmaker understand his place in the struggle?

Struggling to feed a family of seven in the midst of a prolonged drought, a Korean farmer stalks his barren fields and painfully deliberates on a course of action to fend off starvation. It is a stark tale tinged with magical realism juxtaposing the fleeting innocence of childhood against the cruelties of poverty and the complex emotions of child abandonment. As a Korean adoptee, Joy Dietrich draws insightful parallels to the growing pains of the Korean adoptee community.

A fictional short that takes its inspiration from Black Yamari, a thangka in the Rubin Museum’s collection. Recalling her childhood memories, a young Tibetan woman living in New York, displaced, questions if all is lost. Realizing that beauty is fleeting, she attempts to find solace in poetry, ancient texts, and art.