JIA
Los Angeles, California | Film Feature
Drama, Adventure
When Sophia’s non-English-speaking father-in-law Ping vanishes in the U.S., she and her husband Daniel embark on a cross-country road trip with their newborn son. As they search for Ping, they must confront a labor trafficking scheme, the cracks in their marriage, and an uncertain future.
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$3,925
Goal: $10,000 for production
When Sophia’s non-English-speaking father-in-law Ping vanishes in the U.S., she and her husband Daniel embark on a cross-country road trip with their newborn son. As they search for Ping, they must confront a labor trafficking scheme, the cracks in their marriage, and an uncertain future.
Participating In
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
About The Story
JIA is a deeply personal film born from lived experience.
This story explores how a woman handles modern motherhood and personal ambitions and how a marriage moves forward through generational traumas and grief, not with tidy answers, but through the messy, human process of healing.
At its heart, JIA is about love, loss, and reconciliation within an immigrant family. Through the lens of a Chinese American couple searching for a missing father, the film unravels not only a labor trafficking scheme but also the emotional cost of migration, ambition, and generational divide.
While culturally specific, the themes are universal: unspoken expectations between parents and children, the collision of tradition and modernity, and the quiet unraveling of a marriage under pressure. These tensions echo across immigrant communities, making the story both intimate and widely relatable.
Inspired by Yi Yi, Ilo Ilo, and A Separation, the film embraces quiet realism, emotional depth, and moral complexity. Now, in a post-pandemic world where families face renewed economic hardship and moral compromise, stories like this feel more urgent than ever. JIA is a film about the cost of survival—and the possibility of forgiveness. I hope its emotional truth resonates beyond culture, language, or geography.
Why Me, Why This, Why Now?
I’m a first-generation immigrant, a mother of two, and a filmmaker who’s lived much of what this story explores. I know what it feels like to chase a dream while carrying the emotional weight of family, guilt, and cultural expectation. I also know the cost of unspoken expectations in immigrant households—how things left unsaid can fracture even the most loving relationships.
This story comes from my own family history, one that includes a father-in-law who vanished into the marijuana boom, a marriage tested by our immigrant background, personal ambitions and postpartum exhaustion, and the slow, painful process of forgiving and accepting the other person while still becoming myself. JIA is a fictionalized version of that truth, but the emotional core is real.
This is a story only I can tell—with specificity, tenderness, and clarity from years of self-reflection, healing, and reconciliation. And now is the right time to tell it. We’re living through a period where families, especially immigrant families, are quietly being pulled apart by the current political climate, economic strain, moral compromises, and the pressure to "make it" in a fractured world.
JIA doesn’t offer easy answers, but it offers resonance and recognition. It asks: What do we owe to the people who raised us? To the person we chose and married? To the version of ourselves we left behind?
This film is my act of love and rebellion. It’s for everyone who is doing their best to love. It’s for every parent or child who’s carried more than they could say. It's for every woman who still longs to pursue their personal goals while fulfilling their duties as a wife and a mother. And it’s for anyone searching for joy, love, and hope in this broken world.
Your Help Matters
JIA is fiscally sponsored by Film Independent, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, meaning that all donations are tax-deductible. I've been pushing the project forward on my own for nearly three years, and I’ve realized I can’t do it without you!
With your support, we’ll take a major leap toward production. Every dollar you contribute will go directly to essential pre-production and production costs (excluding cast and crew pay).
Making a film is expensive. Your help will allow us to lock locations, apply for permits, secure camera and lighting equipment, source props and wardrobe, and provide meals to nourish the cast and crew on set.
Your tax-deductible donation will help us finalize our casting, build momentum, and bring this story one step closer to the screen.
Our current goal is to begin production in Fall 2025 and complete post-production by Summer 2026.
We can’t wait to take you on this journey with us, and we’re so grateful to have you be part of the JIA family.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Camera and equipment rental
Costs $3,500
Camera package (e.g. ARRI Alexa Mini) Lenses, monitor, matte box, batteries, SSDs G&E basics: light
Catering & Craft Services
Costs $1,500
Meals and snacks for cast/crew Fed crew, happy crew photo credit: Daniel Wu's instagram "HK set lunch"
Location Rental
Costs $3,000
We would need specifically the following locations to shoot for up to 20 days An apartment A farm
Insurance and Permits
Costs $2,000
Production Insurance & Film Permits – Short-term liability insurance for locations and equipment
Share this update!
About This Team
Writer/Director: ELAINE WONG
Elaine Wong is a Hong Kong-born American writer, director, and producer. Her film, Where Dreams Rest, and her web series, Three Chen Sisters, have been officially selected at over 30 film festivals worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong. These projects have earned her a sound fellowship with Dolby Atmos and have been showcased on platforms such as Kanopy, Omeleto, Viddsee, and Roku TV. Her latest narrative short, "52Hz," is currently on AMC+. When she’s not directing, she works as a Cantonese dialect coach for Hollywood television series such as Netflix’s Brothers Sun and Hulu’s The Old Man. She is now the lead director for a start-up educational platform called First Lecture. Her debut feature screenplay, Jia, has been partially financed and is currently in pre-production. It was selected for the Stowe Producers Lab, advanced to the second round of the Sundance Development Lab, was a finalist for the Stage 32 Feature Screenwriting Fellowship Competition, a semifinalist for the Final Draft Big Break 2023, and ranked among the Top 20 Red List for Best Drama Feature on Coverfly. She earned her MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California.
Producer: LAREINA J. WONG
Lareina J. Wong is a Malaysian-born, Chinese-American filmmaker whose production experience includes Apple TV’s Shrinking, Ted Lasso and HBO’s Westworld. Recently, she produced her first feature film, The Interrogation of Anna Goode, in addition to a resume that includes over a dozen short films. From a DGA student award-winning slasher horror film, Night Diner, to an epic dance film for Pepsi, Beth Hooper and the Ultimate Dance Battle. Lareina seeks projects that explore the human experience, embracing their uniqueness across genres; stories that are deeply rooted in humanity, but not necessarily always grounded in reality.
Producer: YUKY SHEN
Yuky Shen is a Shanghai-born, LA-based producer. She graduated from American Film Institute and produced 8 narrative shorts ranging from WWII drama to Kimchi western. Her recent Film Independent Project Involve short film SINGLE RESIDENCE OCCUPANCY won 1st place in From Minutes to Movies ShortFest (presented by Adobe, Imagine Entertainment and Filmzone), and was officially selected in Academy Award qualifying film festivals like Bend Film Festival, Woodstock Film Festival etc. For Shen, filmmaking is a way of fighting. She believes that movies have the power to touch people, make them ruminate, and thus make a change in real life.
Producer: XIAOJIA ZHU
Graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, Xiaojia Zhu has over 20 years of experience in the Chinese film industry. Formerly a production director at Alibaba Pictures and now based in Los Angeles, Zhu has expertise across the entire film production process, from preproduction through post production.
Known for addressing technical transitions in production, Zhu has collaborated with acclaimed directors like Jia Zhangke, John Woo, and Wuershan. Zhu has contributed to over 20 films and TV dramas, establishing strong relationships with major platforms like Youku, iQiyi, and Tencent Video.
Director of Photography: WENTING DENG FISHER
Wenting Deng Fisher is a visual storyteller specializing in both cinematography and directing. She has a multidisciplinary artistic background which shapes her lighting and composition philosophy in cinematography. Discovering and refining a powerful cinematic language is her passion and forte when working with directors.
Her MFA thesis film, Empty Skies, which she wrote and directed, was nominated for the Student Academy Awards. She is a BAFTA Connect Member, a mentee of the ASC Vision Mentorship Program, and a cinematography fellow of Film Independent Project Involve 2023.
Production Designer: XIYU LIN
Xiyu Lin is a LA-based production designer, originally from Jiangsu, China. She graduated from the China Academy of Arts with a B.A. in Exhibition Design. She worked as a scene designer and designed scenery for several museums in China. After a study tour from Japan, she moved to LA and received her first M.F.A. in Stage Design and second M.F.A in Production Design at AFI Conservatory. The narrative she production-designed has been selected or awarded at film festivals in the U.S. and internationally; including the Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, AFI FEST, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Student Emmy, Sitges Film Festival, Warsaw International Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, FIRST International Film Festival, Moscow International Film Festival, etc.
Composer: PETER LAM
Born in Hong Kong and musically trained in London, Peter Lam is a Los Angeles-based award-winning composer. Peter's unique dramatic sensibility and versatility in musical story-telling can be reflected in his diverse output across over 80 film, television, and video game projects.
Recent scores include the dark comedy Trigger Happy (Amazon Prime), the coming-of age drama B-Side:For Taylor (Tubi), the Lunar New Year Cinematic for Riot Games' League of Legends: Wild Rift, and the border-crossing drama Where Dreams Rests (Best Score nomination at Madrid International Film Festival). He has also scored the "Go to Bed Raymond" episode on Hulu's Bite Size Halloween series.
Peter has composed additional music for major TV series such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+), Titans, Doom Patrol (HBOmax), and Jane the Virgin (the CW). As a music editor, he has won a Daytime Emmy for the final season of Clone Wars, and has also music-edited HBO's doc series Catch & Kill, and Netflix's anime Trese.
Executive Producer: HATTIE YU
Haixia Yu, also known as Hattie, is a skilled Chinese film producer and consultant with a broad network spanning the US, Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and China. Her notable work includes films such as Out of Crimes, Reborn, and Yangzi’s Confusion, as well as consulting for The Hollywood Reporter on Asia and Belgium & France market strategies. She is also an active participant in international film festivals, having served on the jury of the Sitges Film Festival in 2017, among others.
Executive Producer: SAVILLE CHAN
Saville is a film producer, screenwriter, lyricist, and composer. Graduated from the Anthropology Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong; he became widely known in 2013 as the producer and screenwriter of the movie "The Way We Dance." He has been focusing on producing films and writing songs for many years. In 2016, he was nominated for the "Best Screenplay" at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards for the movie "One Day We'll Fly." He has also won the "Best Original Film Song" at the Hong Kong Film Awards three times. In 2022, his produced film "A Light Never Goes Out" was invited to ten international film festivals, including Rotterdam and Tokyo International Film Festival, and the film won the "Best Actress" award at the 59th Taiwan Golden Horse Awards.
Executive Producer: PETER SALLADE
Peter Salladé is an experimental multimedia artist with 15 years of experience in film festival management, film marketing and promotion. He comes to this project as an advocate for stories that share rare and powerful moments of trauma and triumph. As an executive producer, he endeavors for audiences all over the world to sympathize with real, multifaceted characters and learn from their struggles. He has just finished a feature, Hallucinations of War, and is now in the distribution process.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
About The Story
JIA is a deeply personal film born from lived experience.
This story explores how a woman handles modern motherhood and personal ambitions and how a marriage moves forward through generational traumas and grief, not with tidy answers, but through the messy, human process of healing.
At its heart, JIA is about love, loss, and reconciliation within an immigrant family. Through the lens of a Chinese American couple searching for a missing father, the film unravels not only a labor trafficking scheme but also the emotional cost of migration, ambition, and generational divide.
While culturally specific, the themes are universal: unspoken expectations between parents and children, the collision of tradition and modernity, and the quiet unraveling of a marriage under pressure. These tensions echo across immigrant communities, making the story both intimate and widely relatable.
Inspired by Yi Yi, Ilo Ilo, and A Separation, the film embraces quiet realism, emotional depth, and moral complexity. Now, in a post-pandemic world where families face renewed economic hardship and moral compromise, stories like this feel more urgent than ever. JIA is a film about the cost of survival—and the possibility of forgiveness. I hope its emotional truth resonates beyond culture, language, or geography.
Why Me, Why This, Why Now?
I’m a first-generation immigrant, a mother of two, and a filmmaker who’s lived much of what this story explores. I know what it feels like to chase a dream while carrying the emotional weight of family, guilt, and cultural expectation. I also know the cost of unspoken expectations in immigrant households—how things left unsaid can fracture even the most loving relationships.
This story comes from my own family history, one that includes a father-in-law who vanished into the marijuana boom, a marriage tested by our immigrant background, personal ambitions and postpartum exhaustion, and the slow, painful process of forgiving and accepting the other person while still becoming myself. JIA is a fictionalized version of that truth, but the emotional core is real.
This is a story only I can tell—with specificity, tenderness, and clarity from years of self-reflection, healing, and reconciliation. And now is the right time to tell it. We’re living through a period where families, especially immigrant families, are quietly being pulled apart by the current political climate, economic strain, moral compromises, and the pressure to "make it" in a fractured world.
JIA doesn’t offer easy answers, but it offers resonance and recognition. It asks: What do we owe to the people who raised us? To the person we chose and married? To the version of ourselves we left behind?
This film is my act of love and rebellion. It’s for everyone who is doing their best to love. It’s for every parent or child who’s carried more than they could say. It's for every woman who still longs to pursue their personal goals while fulfilling their duties as a wife and a mother. And it’s for anyone searching for joy, love, and hope in this broken world.
Your Help Matters
JIA is fiscally sponsored by Film Independent, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, meaning that all donations are tax-deductible. I've been pushing the project forward on my own for nearly three years, and I’ve realized I can’t do it without you!
With your support, we’ll take a major leap toward production. Every dollar you contribute will go directly to essential pre-production and production costs (excluding cast and crew pay).
Making a film is expensive. Your help will allow us to lock locations, apply for permits, secure camera and lighting equipment, source props and wardrobe, and provide meals to nourish the cast and crew on set.
Your tax-deductible donation will help us finalize our casting, build momentum, and bring this story one step closer to the screen.
Our current goal is to begin production in Fall 2025 and complete post-production by Summer 2026.
We can’t wait to take you on this journey with us, and we’re so grateful to have you be part of the JIA family.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Camera and equipment rental
Costs $3,500
Camera package (e.g. ARRI Alexa Mini) Lenses, monitor, matte box, batteries, SSDs G&E basics: light
Catering & Craft Services
Costs $1,500
Meals and snacks for cast/crew Fed crew, happy crew photo credit: Daniel Wu's instagram "HK set lunch"
Location Rental
Costs $3,000
We would need specifically the following locations to shoot for up to 20 days An apartment A farm
Insurance and Permits
Costs $2,000
Production Insurance & Film Permits – Short-term liability insurance for locations and equipment
Share this update!
About This Team
Writer/Director: ELAINE WONG
Elaine Wong is a Hong Kong-born American writer, director, and producer. Her film, Where Dreams Rest, and her web series, Three Chen Sisters, have been officially selected at over 30 film festivals worldwide, including the Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong. These projects have earned her a sound fellowship with Dolby Atmos and have been showcased on platforms such as Kanopy, Omeleto, Viddsee, and Roku TV. Her latest narrative short, "52Hz," is currently on AMC+. When she’s not directing, she works as a Cantonese dialect coach for Hollywood television series such as Netflix’s Brothers Sun and Hulu’s The Old Man. She is now the lead director for a start-up educational platform called First Lecture. Her debut feature screenplay, Jia, has been partially financed and is currently in pre-production. It was selected for the Stowe Producers Lab, advanced to the second round of the Sundance Development Lab, was a finalist for the Stage 32 Feature Screenwriting Fellowship Competition, a semifinalist for the Final Draft Big Break 2023, and ranked among the Top 20 Red List for Best Drama Feature on Coverfly. She earned her MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California.
Producer: LAREINA J. WONG
Lareina J. Wong is a Malaysian-born, Chinese-American filmmaker whose production experience includes Apple TV’s Shrinking, Ted Lasso and HBO’s Westworld. Recently, she produced her first feature film, The Interrogation of Anna Goode, in addition to a resume that includes over a dozen short films. From a DGA student award-winning slasher horror film, Night Diner, to an epic dance film for Pepsi, Beth Hooper and the Ultimate Dance Battle. Lareina seeks projects that explore the human experience, embracing their uniqueness across genres; stories that are deeply rooted in humanity, but not necessarily always grounded in reality.
Producer: YUKY SHEN
Yuky Shen is a Shanghai-born, LA-based producer. She graduated from American Film Institute and produced 8 narrative shorts ranging from WWII drama to Kimchi western. Her recent Film Independent Project Involve short film SINGLE RESIDENCE OCCUPANCY won 1st place in From Minutes to Movies ShortFest (presented by Adobe, Imagine Entertainment and Filmzone), and was officially selected in Academy Award qualifying film festivals like Bend Film Festival, Woodstock Film Festival etc. For Shen, filmmaking is a way of fighting. She believes that movies have the power to touch people, make them ruminate, and thus make a change in real life.
Producer: XIAOJIA ZHUGraduated from the Beijing Film Academy, Xiaojia Zhu has over 20 years of experience in the Chinese film industry. Formerly a production director at Alibaba Pictures and now based in Los Angeles, Zhu has expertise across the entire film production process, from preproduction through post production.
Known for addressing technical transitions in production, Zhu has collaborated with acclaimed directors like Jia Zhangke, John Woo, and Wuershan. Zhu has contributed to over 20 films and TV dramas, establishing strong relationships with major platforms like Youku, iQiyi, and Tencent Video.
Director of Photography: WENTING DENG FISHER
Wenting Deng Fisher is a visual storyteller specializing in both cinematography and directing. She has a multidisciplinary artistic background which shapes her lighting and composition philosophy in cinematography. Discovering and refining a powerful cinematic language is her passion and forte when working with directors.
Her MFA thesis film, Empty Skies, which she wrote and directed, was nominated for the Student Academy Awards. She is a BAFTA Connect Member, a mentee of the ASC Vision Mentorship Program, and a cinematography fellow of Film Independent Project Involve 2023.
Production Designer: XIYU LIN
Xiyu Lin is a LA-based production designer, originally from Jiangsu, China. She graduated from the China Academy of Arts with a B.A. in Exhibition Design. She worked as a scene designer and designed scenery for several museums in China. After a study tour from Japan, she moved to LA and received her first M.F.A. in Stage Design and second M.F.A in Production Design at AFI Conservatory. The narrative she production-designed has been selected or awarded at film festivals in the U.S. and internationally; including the Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, AFI FEST, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Student Emmy, Sitges Film Festival, Warsaw International Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival, FIRST International Film Festival, Moscow International Film Festival, etc.
Composer: PETER LAM
Born in Hong Kong and musically trained in London, Peter Lam is a Los Angeles-based award-winning composer. Peter's unique dramatic sensibility and versatility in musical story-telling can be reflected in his diverse output across over 80 film, television, and video game projects.
Recent scores include the dark comedy Trigger Happy (Amazon Prime), the coming-of age drama B-Side:For Taylor (Tubi), the Lunar New Year Cinematic for Riot Games' League of Legends: Wild Rift, and the border-crossing drama Where Dreams Rests (Best Score nomination at Madrid International Film Festival). He has also scored the "Go to Bed Raymond" episode on Hulu's Bite Size Halloween series.
Peter has composed additional music for major TV series such as Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+), Titans, Doom Patrol (HBOmax), and Jane the Virgin (the CW). As a music editor, he has won a Daytime Emmy for the final season of Clone Wars, and has also music-edited HBO's doc series Catch & Kill, and Netflix's anime Trese.
Executive Producer: HATTIE YU
Haixia Yu, also known as Hattie, is a skilled Chinese film producer and consultant with a broad network spanning the US, Europe, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and China. Her notable work includes films such as Out of Crimes, Reborn, and Yangzi’s Confusion, as well as consulting for The Hollywood Reporter on Asia and Belgium & France market strategies. She is also an active participant in international film festivals, having served on the jury of the Sitges Film Festival in 2017, among others.
Executive Producer: SAVILLE CHAN
Saville is a film producer, screenwriter, lyricist, and composer. Graduated from the Anthropology Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong; he became widely known in 2013 as the producer and screenwriter of the movie "The Way We Dance." He has been focusing on producing films and writing songs for many years. In 2016, he was nominated for the "Best Screenplay" at the 35th Hong Kong Film Awards for the movie "One Day We'll Fly." He has also won the "Best Original Film Song" at the Hong Kong Film Awards three times. In 2022, his produced film "A Light Never Goes Out" was invited to ten international film festivals, including Rotterdam and Tokyo International Film Festival, and the film won the "Best Actress" award at the 59th Taiwan Golden Horse Awards.
Executive Producer: PETER SALLADE
Peter Salladé is an experimental multimedia artist with 15 years of experience in film festival management, film marketing and promotion. He comes to this project as an advocate for stories that share rare and powerful moments of trauma and triumph. As an executive producer, he endeavors for audiences all over the world to sympathize with real, multifaceted characters and learn from their struggles. He has just finished a feature, Hallucinations of War, and is now in the distribution process.