Roots That Reach Toward the Sky  is a NYU thesis film shot on 16mm by Chinese diasporic writer/director and muralist Jess X. Snow. It was co-written with award-winning trans Chinese-American playwright, Kit Yan (Interstate) and lensed by cinematographer, Sheldon Chau.

Logline: When her mother’s Chinese Traditional Medicine shop gets vandalized, Kai, a young botanist and heir of her mothers ancestral practice is pushed to the edge of what her mental health can handle. Thrust in the middle of her immigrant mother’s grief and her muralist partner’s resistant hope, Kai must decide what is most important to her.

A film about queer intimacy, mental health, mutual aid, traditional Chinese medicine and intergenerational healing.

We shot Roots That Reach Toward The Sky in late summer of 2022 in NYC with a primarily Asian, Pacific Islander, BIPOC and/or queer cast and crew.

We raising money to finish post production, and move through color, score, and VFX so we can finish our film for a fall 2023 premiere.

Director's Statement

After writing/directing four short films about the dreams and disobediences of queer Asian femmes that travelled the international festival circuit, I'm now finishing my final short: a loving essay about inter-generational care, diasporic plants, Chinese medicine, community art and queer intimacy. 

 In western science, plants and birds from Asia are viewed as “invasive species.” In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act became the first law to ban a group of people from migrating to the United States. 150 years later, during this pandemic, East Asian and Southeast Asian storefronts, elders, healers and femmes continue to be targeted. 

Navigating the omnipresent and numbing fears of anti-Asian violence in NYC, I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: I don’t have to grieve in isolation–I can rely on my loved ones, the healing power of herbs, and the spirits of my ancestors to move through the pain together. I witnessed the beautiful ways members of my community moved through this grief and turned back to care. 
 
This care took many forms: the vibrant art and activism brought to the streets, the quiet of self care in the sanctuary of one’s own home, the intergenerational healing through traditional medicine between family members. This film is a constellation connecting these disparate notions of care, and shows how integral each is to each other and the health of our community. 

My aunt and my own grandmother are Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture practitioners. Their matriarchal knowledge has grounded me in a non-western modality of caring for the body in times of crisis.

Through this film, we offer audiences a first-hand perspective of how Pearl, a Chinese migrant mother (a healer and herbalist) and Kai, her queer daughter, and herbalist in training–find catharsis in a time of crisis. As Pearl navigates a deeply internal grief, Kai navigates external anxiety attacks. While Kai retreats inwards and pushes everyone away, her queer partner, Zia, a Chamorro and Philipinx community movement artist, unifies the community in the creation of a mural that declares "In The Future, Our Asian Community is Safe".  As Zia invites Kai to heal by witnessing the power of community art, Pearl teaches Kai to heal in the same way Pearl’s own mother once taught her in China: through Traditional Chinese Medicine and herbs grown in the family garden.

Merging the personal and the political, with a profound reverence for the natural world, our film offers viewers an understanding that in times of crisis, interdependence and cross-cultural solidarity is key to our healing and survival.

Help Us Finish Our Film

Our films' production was a labor of love supported with generous awards and grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for Science in Film and Sundance Institute's Outreach and Inclusion Initiative, donations from friends and family, and also the director's own savings. 

We need help from our friends and community to get through the final stages of the film. Funds will be used to pay our editor, colorist, sound designer and mixer, VFX artist, original score and poster/credit designer an equitable wage and cover costs to apply to film festivals

We aim to finish the film in time for the summer 2023 international film festival circuit.

Your support will also help us bring our film to community and educational spaces. We hope to use the film as a tool to spark dialogues around the power of mutual aid, community art, and traditional medicine with diasporic communities across cultures and generations.

Our Team

This film is directed by Jess X. Snow, co-written with Kit Yan, stars Shirley Chen, Pearl Wu and Ciale Charfouros, and is lensed by cinematographer, Sheldon Chau and original music by queer Taiwanese-American musician, Treya Lam, mixed by Chucky Kim. It was produced by Frisly Soberanis, Akemi Look and Eris Qian. We consulted with renowned Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner and Acupuncturist, Zoey XinYi Gong. It features an all Asian American/Pacific Islander cast, and a largely queer and BIPOC crew.  

Jess X. Snow (director/co-writer)
  
Jess X. Snow (they/them/他/tā) is a writer/director, multi-disciplinary artist and poet. Spanning murals, augmented reality, children's books, and narrative films, their body of work explores Asian migration, and kinship across cultures and species, and abolitionist futures. Their film and immersive work has been supported by BAFTA, the National Film Board of Canada, Tribeca Film Institute, Playwright Horizons, and residencies from Caldera, Asian American Arts Alliance and MOCADA.Their shorts include: Safe Among Stars (2019), which screened at Blackstar, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Little Sky (2021), which was acquired by CBC Gem, and screened at Cinequest Film Festival (Best Student Short), Durban International Film Festival (Special Mention), BFI Flare, Frameline, Outfest, and 30+ festivals across the world. Their murals have been profiled by The NY Times Magazine, The LA Times, The SF Chronicle and Hyperallergic, and can be found across the continent. They hold an MFA in film from NYU where they were a BAFTA BBC America Diversity Scholar.

Kit Yan (co-writer)
Kit Yan is a Yellow American New York based artist, born in China, and raised in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Kit is a 2021 Jonathan Larson Grant and Kleban Prize recipient for Libretto, a 2021 Sundance IDP Fellow and grantee, a Vivace Award recipient for big ideas in musical theater, a former Musical Theater Factory Makers Fellow, Playwright’s Center fellow, Company One/Pao Arts Fellow, Lincoln Center Writer in residence, Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow and MacDowell Fellow.  Kit’s first musical co-created with Melissa Li, INTERSTATE, which won "Best Lyrics" at the 2018 New York Musical Theater Festival, showcased in the 2019 NAMT festival, and produced by Mixed Blood in 2020, and East West Players in 2022. Their second musical MISS STEP received a commission from 5th Avenue theater, and has a forthcoming workshop with Playwrights Horizons and Musical Theater Factory, and a beta production in Feb 2023 at the Village Theater. Their work has also been produced by the American Repertory Theater, the Smithsonian, and Diversionary Theater. 

Sheldon Chau (cinematographer)
Born in Los Angeles of Cantonese descent, Sheldon discovered as a teenager that movies were more than simply entertainment when his uncle introduced him to the Criterion Collection. His first project after college was a short documentary on his father where he learned of his parents' journey to the U.S. in which they fled Vietnam after the war. This experience affirmed Sheldon’s passion for storytelling via filmmaking, and he went on to earn his MFA in directing and cinematography at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Sheldon’s work has screened at major festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, and Venice. His notable credits as DP include Nafi’s Father - Senegal’s official entry for the 2021 Oscars; Nigerian Prince - an AT&T Untold Stories winner and Tribeca Film Fest premiere; and Summer Knight - Best Film at the Tokyo Film Fest . He is the winner of the Arri-Volker Bahnemann Award for Cinematography and is also part of the ASC Vision Mentorship program under Larry Fong, ASC. 

Akemi Look (producer)
Prior to acting, Akemi represented the United States as a member of the USA National Team in Rhythmic Gymnastics, competing at the 2002 World Championships and International competitions around the world. She studied at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, and The Alvin Ailey School of Dance.  Akemi made her television debut on HBO’s How To Make It In America and her feature film debut as the lead in The Man From Earth: Holocene. Her indie film work has been an official selection at numerous Oscar-Qualifying film festivals including Montreal World Film Festival, Slamdance, Hollyshorts, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Urban World, and more. Akemi is deeply passionate about advocating for survivors of sexual abuse, trauma informed healing modalities, and creating a world where Asian American femme and queer stories are seen and heard.

Eris Qian (producer)
Eris Qian is based in New York City and considers herself as a global nomad. Born and raised in China, she has lived and studied in five continents. She leverages her diasporic experience to tell stories about female characters who defy the norms in finding their place in the world. 

 Her debut short film MOTHER TONGUE premiered at CAAMFest, the biggest Asian American film festival in the world, and screened at 15 prestigious festivals globally.

​Her first feature PULLING SEEDLINGS was selected for 2021 Sundance x Women In Film Financing Strategy Intensive, the Mubi Wscripted Cannes Screenplay List, and the inaugural NYU Production Lab Development Studio.

Frisly Soberanis (producer)
Frisly Soberanis is a director and producer, from Queens, New York via Guatemala. A member of the Undocumented Filmmaker’s Collective, his work explores separation, distance and the migrant experience. He has received support from E4FC’s Fuse fund, Tribeca Film Institute’s New Media Prototype Fund, Culturestrike and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. He is one of the Open Society’s Photo Documentary Fellows. The last project he worked on, the Family Reunions Project, was a 360 video/ virtual reality project that explored the layers of reality, memories and messages. It has shown at Hemispheric Institute’s Encuentro @ el Centro de Cultura Digital (CCDMX) in Mexico City, and during the Open Society Foundations Moving Walls 25 Exhibit. He grew up filming quinceañeras and bodas, and hopes to create stories of healing and reconnection.

treya lam (original score)
treya lam is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and composer who’s joyously complex identity informs but does not define their work, whether solo or when collaborating with a variety of multidisciplinary ensembles. Their debut album Good News was created entirely by an all women and genderqueer team and released via Kaki King’s label, Short Stuff Records. lam is currently developing otherland - an audiovisual chamber-folk album on radical self acceptance, intersecting identities and healing in the wake of grief and loss as a 2022-2023 recipient of the New York Voices commission from Joe’s Pub at The Public. lam is a OneBeat fellow, NYCLU Artist Ambassador and active member of the Resistance Revival Chorus. treya was an artist in residence at Joe’s Pub in 2019 and MASS MoCA in 2020. lam has performed original music at Lincoln Center, the Prospect Park Bandshell and the American Museum of Natural History.

Shirley Chen (Lead Actress - Kai) 

Shirley Chen was awarded “Best Acting in a Narrative Short” at SXSW for her work in Krista and made her Sundance debut in 2020 as a lead in the feature Beast Beast (dir: Danny Madden, EP: Alec Baldwin). Select credits: The Resident (Fox), Man of God (Geffen Playhouse), Speechless (ABC), Gamer’s Guide (Disney XD), and Parenthood (NBC). Shirley is currently a senior at Harvard University, where she pursues a double major in History & Literature and Theater, Dance & Media, with a focus in Asian American Studies. On campus, she was one of the first six women cast in the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a nearly 200-year-old musical production by America’s oldest theatrical group. Shirley practices Long Fist style Chinese martial arts at the National Wushu Training Center.

Che’Li (Ciale Charfauros) (Supporting Actor - Zia) is the life- performance embodiment project ritualizing consciousness and shaping change at the intersections of beauty, absurdity, and sensuality, tranifested by theater-maker-booty-shaker, alyxandra ciale charfauros (they/them). A Queer, Neurodivergent, and Pinay CHamoru, they are based in NYC with a BFA in Theater Performance: Acting from the University of Michigan (‘21) with two minors in Asian Pacific Islander American Studies and Performing Arts Management & Entrepreneurship. Currently, Che’Li are performing their original piece, Doo Indáyz: A Clown’s Prayer, at Soho Playhouse and are a part of the Anticapitalism for Artists 2022 summer cohort. They are represented by Vision Entertainment in LA, working to become bicoastal. Che’Li believes in creative livelihood that is justice-oriented, trauma-informed, self- determined, and love-based. To the Kapwa that make this work possible: “my feet find you where yours have always been.”