Kid C

TYPE: Fiction
GENRE: Drama
STATUS: Development

LOGLINE

When Lee destroys the only friendship she has outside of her volatile family, she must find a new way to escape.

SYNOPSIS

Based on field research, expertise from the therapy community, studies of similar films, and my personal experiences, Kid C explores a child’s agency in the face of parental abuse, intergenerational trauma, and institutional racism.

Set in the late 1990's, the film follows Lee, a rambunctious 10-year-old, during her first year as a Chinese immigrant in Texas. Cracking under the pressures of volatile parents, Lee, a rambunctious 10-year-old attempts to reclaim a sense of childhood with her best friend John, an African American boy. But when she accidentally reveals a secret that he shared, their friendship is threatened and life begins to collapse.

The film follows Lee and John during the entirety of their 4th grade as they attempt to discover their artistic talents while balancing the ups and downs of growing up in a dysfunctional family.  

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

I began conceiving the story when I participated in cop-ride-alongs with the Houston police in 2013 and 2014. Approximately 60% to 80% of 911 calls were related to domestic violence and mental illness. The frequency was shocking. The only thing that the police could do was ask the perpetrator and the victim to return to their residence without resolving or preventing future recurrence.

When I was eleven years old, I was on the other side of the call. The police came to our apartment because my father was hitting me. Instead of interpreting their arrival as protection, I saw them as a threat. The event made me feel more humiliated and ashamed of myself instead of making me feel safe.

In order to make sense of my observations and my past, I attended civil court hearings, and read hundreds of books on childhood development, attachment theory, and childhood trauma. I studied coming-of-age films such as The 400 Blows, Moonlight, We the Animals, Short Term 12, Minding the Gap, The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez, Sons of Perdition, and more to make sure that Kid C adds impact to the canon. I began going to therapy.

In some ways, I’ve been working towards Kid C my entire life. It’s helped me to interpret the past in a new way and to heal. Children and adults who have had trauma have a different kind of hero’s journey. Their developmental needs, including identity formation, were never met and when trauma occurs, their bodies and brains often become stuck, which is why many victims continue to relive their trauma and to continue seeking people and situations that replicate the event. As adults, they must learn to re-parent themselves.

I want to shed light on the nuances of family systems, especially in the Asian American community, where love is normalized as mistreatment, silence, and obedience. I also want to demonstrate that neglect and verbal abuse is just as destructive as physical abuse because it alters our sense of self and sets us up for trauma bonds in the future.

In order to make an emotionally honest film and to have organic outreach during distribution, I have reached out to therapists with extensive knowledge of family systems and trauma recovery for feedback. In addition, I’m cultivating my own community by writing about childhood trauma and how to recover from it on platforms such as Medium. Some of my essays have had 17K views and have generated sales of books on these topics in six countries.

Domestic violence has been called the pandemic within the pandemic, especially affecting people of color. Growing up, I always wondered why people are the way that they are. Many of the answers lie in our childhood. I believe that if we examine the past with a new understanding, we can change our lives. With your help, we can make an important film that can help others to face their childhood pain and to change childcare practices and philosophies.

KEY CREW

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