Our story is about O and Yalin, immigrants living in New York. We focus on accurately representing the story's world by also casting non-actors native to Chinatown. Behind the camera, we are a female-centric crew (director and producers and more) of Chinese American and immigrant identities.

Story

What does it mean to really be touched?

The life of a zamboni driver, O, is isolated. Day after day, he travels from work site to work site, gritting his teeth through neck pain, stopping only one time a day for a 10 o'clock break at a local diner, where waitress Rosa is the only one who acknolwedges his presence. Will he just go on like this? If the routine breaks, will he crack?

One day, his work gets cancelled. Looking at a free massage coupon he picked off the floor, he takes a chance and ventures to this underground massage parlor. In this warm, neon-lit, uncomfortably intimate space, O meets Yalin, a talkative, blind masseuse. He encounters what it really means to be touched...can he endure it?

 

Director's Statement

Like many in my generation, growing up, I dealt with a lot of loneliness, loss of belonging and not being understood.

The experience of moving from city to city in China as a result of my parents’ divorce influenced my view on the world and the fractured human relationships in rapidly modernizing environments. Growing up surrounded by people migrating for work and mix-race Chinese, I’m always interested in exploring the nuanced, untold stories of people living on the margins of the society.

In Happy Ending, O is an immigrant who does not feel belonged anywhere he’s lived. The fragile yet precious relationship between him and his mother is his only anchor. I’ve always wondered myself - what would happen if I lose my mother? Through O’s story, I get to explore the curious potential for kinship between two strangers in urban environments.

 

- Mei Liu

 

Our Team

 

We are a team of film students from New York University (Tisch School of the Arts), along with young film professionals based in NYC. But we're also from all over the place - Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen. And we share a passion for telling stories that transcend boundaries and barriers to deepen the cultural understanding between different communities. 

According to a study by USC Annenberg, a mere 3.1% of Hollywood directors were Asian or Asian-American in the past decade, and underrepresentation persists. Among the contention surrounding immigration today, nearly 50 million immigrants live in the U.S., and immigrants comprise 38% of the New York City population.

Throughout our casting and crew recruitment process, our focus is to enrich our film by reflecting the world around us and the communities in New York. Happy Ending can be a small part of something bigger. As young and aspirational filmmakers from underrepresented backgrounds, we hope to join force with the rising movement of advocating diversity and inclusion in media representation, and ultimately, expanding our understanding for each other in the real world. 

 

Your Support

Making a movie in New York City is exciting, yet expensive! After earning a small grant from our school, we are raising money to shoot the film over March 2019. Your donation will go towards all the core areas of our production and our largest line items - camera, locations, production design, and food & transportation for our cast and crew. 

 

 

With your support, we would be able to:

- rent Hollywood-grade camera equipment to capture every visual nuance between O and Yalin's emotional exchange in the massage parlor;

- secure a beautiful ice rink location in New York with O’s signature zamboni;

- find both actors and non-actors with unique sensibilities of their own to enrich our film;

- and finally, distribute our film to audiences around the world and truly bring our film to transcend boundaries, as in our mission statement.

 

We would like to invite you to embark on this creative journey with us. Every and any kind of help would empower this project, whether it's a dollar or ten or just the act of sharing our campaign on social media. We cannot wait to tell this story, and with your support, we can make Happy Ending come true. 

 

Lookbook