Matinee
Genre: Documentaries
Film Year: 2022
Locations: USA
Film Length: 102 min.
Languages: English
Director: David Siev
Audience Award Winner, SXSW
At the start of the 2020 pandemic, documentarian David Siev left his life in New York City to return to his small conservative hometown of Bad Axe, Michigan, and spend the quarantine helping his struggling parents with their prominent local restaurant. With pandemic fears rising alongside racial tensions, the generational scars of surviving Cambodia’s “killing fields” begin to haunt David’s father as he fears the consequences of living as a Cambodian family in a predominantly Trump-supporting town. As the Black Lives Matter movement takes center stage in America, the family organizes a BLM protest in their conservative town, using their collective voice to speak out in their conservative community. What begins as a love letter to his hometown morphs into a testament to the power of putting family above all else.
Introduction by Shilpa Davé (UVA)