CAPE Selects Winners of the Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge Year 2

Los Angeles, September 19, 2023 — CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) and Janet Yang Productions) has finally selected the grant winners of the Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge for Asian American and Pacific Islander Women or Non-Binary Filmmakers. The Grantees as follows:

Dorothy Xiao (she/her) | “Only in this World”
Dorothy Xiao is a Chinese American film director of grounded family dramas with magical elements, using her Psychology background to focus on the complexities of vulnerable emotions like loneliness and grief. Her short films total over 600,000 views online, and she has worked on over 30 projects with companies like CBS, HBO, and Disney. She directed the award-winning short COLORFUL MINDS for the 2022 CBS Leadership Pipeline Challenge, which won a $75,000 donation from CBS to the nonprofit Pained Brain. When not making films, Dorothy binge watches movies with her stuffed bunny Rabby and drinks copious amounts of boba milk tea. Learn more at dorxiao.com

Kristy Choi (she/her or they/them) | The Whistling Woman”
Kristy Choi is an award-winning filmmaker based in the unceded land of the Tongva and Chumash peoples (Los Angeles, California). Her work traverses across documentary, narrative, and hybrid formats and is primarily interested in the Asian and Asian-American femme experience of freedom, spirituality, and environment. Her short film, HERSELVES, was released by The New Yorker in 2021 and is free to stream worldwide. Her most recent film, Excerpts from a Field Guide, will be released by REI in 2023. Kristy received a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and completed a DAAD Post-Graduate Fellowship at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

Rippin Sindher (she/her) | “Flight 182”
Rippin Sindher is a Punjabi-American storyteller who grew up in a raisin farm town and pivoted her career after extensively traveling the Amazon rainforest. Under her culture-forward banner, Sindherella Co., Rippin directed award-winning films: “Broken Drawer,” “The Hideout” and “SEVA” which earned special Congressional recognition. In 2019, Rippin was the first directing fellow on “Ratched” for the Ryan Murphy HALF Initiative. Previously, she managed programming for the Directors Guild of America and served as a senior creative director on numerous global campaigns. An advocate for social justice, Rippin founded KAUR Creative and earned the UCLA Women Leaders Award for Service.

Shruti Parekh (she/her) | “Zari”
Shruti Parekh is an Atlanta-bred, Brooklyn-based Indian American filmmaker who tells intimate and incisive stories of life on the margins of society. Her work spans fiction, documentary, journalism, and animation. Shruti’s short films have played at multiple Oscar qualifying festivals, and her first narrative short Blood Moon won the Audience Award at the South Asian Film Festival of America. As a journalist, Shruti’s digital videos have garnered millions of views. Shruti has a BA from Brown University and an MFA in Directing from UCLA, where she received the Jack Nicholson Distinguished Student Director Award and the Wasserman Film Production Fellowship.

Each filmmaker will receive $25,000 in production grants each to go toward their short film, all of which specifically feature stories with Asian women or non-binary protagonists. Outside of the four grantees, a special honorable mention goes to Desdemona Chiang. Remaining finalists were Jill Sachs, Kyle Casey Chu, and Liz Lian.

The Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge is the brainchild of Academy President and Producer Janet Yang whose aim is to help uplift women and non-binary filmmakers and stories in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

Director Alice Wu (Netflix’s The Half of It) returned to provide a 4-line script for the Challenge’s final round where finalists were required to shoot a short piece (up to 1-minute) based on her script. The jury for this year’s challenge included Asian and Pacific Islander women artists and leaders from across the industry including Ianete Le’i, Geena Rocero, Mirsada Abdool Raman, Munika Lay, Naomi Scott, Niti Shah, Dana Ledoux Miller, Karen Chau, Jessica Henwick, Geeta Malik and Kelly Marie Tran.

Presented by CAPE and Janet Yang Productions, the Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge Year 2 is made possible by funding from Julia S. Gouw and with additional support from Asian Women Leadership in Philanthropy Fund, Jeanelle Arias, Sandra Choi, Cindy Y. Huang, Luyi Khasi, Jessy Li, Priscilla Lim, Jean Shim, Monica Suryapranata, Toni Wang, and Gillian Yu.

To learn more about the Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge, please visit our page at capeusa.org/short-film-challenge