“I’m actually very excited,” says Sophia Wong Boccio, founder and executive director of the Asian Pop-Up Cinema. The fifth annual festival runs from September 10-October 10 and features 22 films spanning East Asia. Though the pandemic created challenges for the festival, Wong Boccio overcame those hurdles by creating a unique hybrid film experience—seven films are available to see in-person via a socially distant movie experience at the Davis Drive-In Theater in Lincoln Yards, while the rest are available to rent online and enjoy in the comfort of one’s own home. Wong Boccio notes, “We are reaching the entire United States now because of the virtual program, so our audience is spreading to a national base instead of [just] Chicago.”
A standout among the Chinese offerings is All About ING, a heartrending drama that follows the lives of a father, mother, and son in the aftermath of a liver cancer diagnosis. Broken into three acts, director Huang Zi is methodical in his tracing of each family member’s wending grief, as well as life’s inexorable plod forward. Verdant and lucid, the story takes a gentle approach to tragedy, giving breathing room for the complex ways each character comes to terms with the impending death of a loved one.
