Hi everyone! Willow here!

This is a story I hold dear to my heart and it will mean the world to my family and me to see it come true. We appreciate any and all contributions and your support can really make a difference to our production. Your contributions will go towards renting equipment, securing locations, production design, COVID precautions, and feeding the cast and crew.

We are currently in pre-production and planning on filming towards the end of the summer. We will bring this film to the 2022-2023 festival circuit and release it online via Vimeo.

Thank you so much for your support to make our vision come true and help us revolutionalize Asian representations onscreen!

I Just Want Things to Work Out is a refreshing coming-of-age story about a pair of dynamic yet dysfunctional siblings. 

After ending her first relationship, Fei, a 20-year-old, foul-mouthed Chinese American girl, returns home for spring break. It didn’t take long for her to find her teenage brother Seymour’s secret -- he has a massive crush on his friend Maya!  

Fei suddenly finds purpose in her failed relationship. As Seymour reluctantly accepts her offer to help him pursue Maya, Fei sets out to make her brother the man of her dreams, all while clumsily healing from her breakup.

This film is dedicated to my 15-year-old brother Simon. My apologies for being a lousy wing-woman, buddy.

Because of the pandemic, I haven’t been home for over a year. In real life, everything happened over the phone. When my brother had his heart broken, I didn’t know what to do. I wish I could be there to give him a hug, tell him everything is going to be ok, and just support him with my presence. But I couldn’t. 

My Chinese upbringing also never taught me how to verbally express love. So, I decided to make a movie instead and tell him everything I want him to know: healing is hard, but we will always be by his side, because we love him. 

This is a slice-of-life narrative that enriches Asian representation on screen by appealing to universal emotions through comedy.

In light of rampant hate crimes against Asians in America, I want to use this film to humanize the Chinese community and show a different side of Asian families. We are not the model minority. We can be flawed. We can be in a dysfunctional relationship that never knows how to communicate. This is the Chinese family that I know. This is the family portrayed in this film.

Moreover, both the love interests for Fei and her brother Seymour are not Chinese, which sparks a rare conversation about interracial dating. As a Chinese woman, interracial dating carries a different meaning for me. In many discourses about the topic, the woman's agency is often diminished by people within and outside her community. I want to use this film to address my perspective and show my agency in my choice. In all, this is a very witty, personal, and meaningful narrative that aspires to debunk stereotypes and provoke crucial conversations.

Team Bio :

Writer/Director/Producer: Yinuo Willow Cai

Coming from a small beach town in China, Willow finds inspiration from the comedic and dramatic moments in the ordinary. Her first short film, Banana Man, an absurdist comedy about the identity crisis experienced by transcultural individuals, was nominated for Best Comedy at the All American High School Film Festival 2018. When she’s not writing the next hilariously relatable narrative, you can find her figure skating, doing stand-up comedy around LA, and working on her video essay channel on YouTube. 

Producer: Stanley Lin

Stanley Lin is a producer and cinematographer based in Los Angeles, California. He is currently attending the University of Southern California as a double major between Cinema and Media Studies and Business Administration. He is set to graduate in 2022, after which Lin plans to start working on feature film sets. He holds a strong belief that a good technical background can immensely aid any production as technology and art are becoming more intertwined than ever before. Lin directed his first film in 2019 titled No Part Too Small, a documentary on how climate change is affecting the small Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and what its citizens are doing to fight against it. His career aspiration to be able to inspire a future generation of diverse creatives to enter the entertainment industry and tell their stories because stories from all around the world should be shared and valued.

Producer: Kera McKeon

A SoCal native, Kera grew up on film sets. She is now a Writing for Screen and Television Major at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. She has produced over a dozen short films that have all gone to festivals and served as the writer & director for several of her own. Kera focuses her work on coming-of-age comedies. She has a vested interest in I Just Want Things to Work Out to well, work out, as she has spent the last several years living with Willow as she experienced the highs and lows of the experiences that inspired the film.

Advisory Producer: Val Tan

Val Tan is a filmmaker from Singapore! She will soon complete her studies in film at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts. Val is passionate about telling stories from the heart, leaning towards themes of culture and family. She is proud of her Chinese background and wants to bring more diverse faces to the big screen.

Director of Photography: Luke Sargent

Luke is a seasoned cinematographer and a USC School of Cinematic Arts alumni. He has worked on a plethora of excellent projects including the Sweet Potatoes that won Best Narrative at the Student Academy Award. 

Production Designer: Mari Kure

Mari is a director/production designer studying Film production and Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University. Her experiences as an Asian American and studies in Asian culture inform her storytelling and inspire her to create authentic and complex stories about the Asian experience. Her knowledge of furniture design and woodworking enables her to make complex props. She believes that set design plays an integral role in conveying depth in a character and strives to do so through subtle touches and choice in color palette.

Co-Editor: Annie Zheng

Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Annie is a freshman in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California. She is constantly finding new ways to merge various forms of media, with interests in creative coding, multimedia storytelling, and experimental film. Although she has not currently been recognized for her work on a larger scale, she hopes that in everything she does, she will be able to provide a voice to the queer and Asian communities as well as to shed light on the human condition.

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We are so grateful to have you as a part of this journey! Stay tuned for more updates coming your way <33