Academy Awards FYC | DALY CITY | Best Live Action Short

From Writer/Director Nick Hartanto:I have always been drawn to making films that tell deeply personal stories based on my own lived experience. These truths, I believe, are what connect audiences to my stories and characters. It's also what has led to the success of my films: The Dishwasher, which I co-directed, premiered at Tribeca 2019 and was inspired by my experience working as a line cook in the kitchen of a New York fine dining restaurant.My latest project, Daly City, is an autobiographical story that draws from my experiences growing up as an Indonesian immigrant in the Bay Area. There is a sense of urgency for me to tell this story NOW. We are living in a moment of self-examination for the AANHPI community, and in recent years there has been much discourse about the idea of the "model minority myth,” a seemingly positive but damaging stereotype that exotifies Asian immigrants and attempts to define our sense of worth.While this issue has historically been addressed in documentaries, it's rarely explored in fiction. In telling this story as a narrative film, I want the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the cost of assimilation, as told through the perspective of a young Indonesian-American boy straddling both cultures. For me, this story is about inspiring a new generation of immigrants so that we can both understand our parents' sacrifices in becoming the model minority and also transcend them.My team and I believe that narrative storytelling wields the most powerful means of persuasion by speaking through universal emotions, thus paving the way for social and political change. We believe that, at a time of renewed xenophobia with chilling repercussions playing out daily around us, an honest inside view of the Asian American immigrant experience like “Daly City” must be seen by all. We believe our film has the power to warm hearts, spark thoughts and invite understanding.