Documentary
The Margins
- Format
- Documentary
- My role
- Director · Producer
- Year
- 2026
- Stage
- Development / Early production
The Margins / Documentary triptych
Three self-contained documentary portraits ask what home becomes when a life can no longer be contained by a single culture, language, family or social world.
The project
The Margins follows people whose lives have developed across multiple cultural systems. It looks beyond a single definition of third-culture identity, asking how belonging is made through relationships, memories, places, routines and forms of expression.
The film is being developed as a triptych. Each portrait can stand on its own; their connection comes through a shared cinematic language and thematic progression, rather than a requirement that every person prove the same argument.
Cinematic approach
The approach favors close observation, gestures, environments, everyday routines and ambient sound, with conventional talking-head interviews kept to a minimum. Each portrait is intended to develop its own visual and sonic vocabulary within the larger film.
Short documentary · Development / early production
Director’s statement
Adapted from the current project concept and director’s statement.
After growing into adulthood between China and the United States, I became less interested in deciding which single place I belonged to, and more interested in the space between them.
The Margins continues a conversation I began in A Wayfarer, turning the camera toward other people. I want to discover where our experiences diverge, rather than find versions of myself.
The project asks whether experiences still described as marginal may be shaping new ideas of home. I want to observe how people build belonging before those experiences are treated as ordinary.
Where can I belong? What can I call home? How can I be understood?
Questions guiding the current project development
Three developing perspectives
The current portrait framework explores social belonging and access, the body as a portable home, and forms of expression beyond inherited spoken languages. These remain developing directions rather than a completed film.
Current stage
Development / early production. One portrait is entering production; the other two remain in thematic development and participant scouting. The current estimated runtime is approximately 20 minutes and may change.