SAAFF Opening Night Welcomes Community, Calls to Action

The 2025 Seattle Asian American Film Festival (SAAFF) kicked off its two days of in-person screenings on June 20 and continues virtually through June 29. The opening night screened Reflections & Legacies, a feature-length compilation of films focused on stories of refugees and immigrants of Southeast Asian communities into the United States. While only a few hours of programming in a shorter-than-usual SAAFF, the evening captured a deeper sense of meaning and community than its schedule would suggest.

SAAFF has existed in some form since 1985 with lapses over some periods of time, but its current iteration has run continuously since 2012. The festival is a volunteer-led effort with support from local organizations like the International Examiner.

“I would say that the 50-year anniversary [of the end of the Vietnam War] was a big driving factor in us deciding to put on a film festival this year. Because we were actually planning to take a break and then come back in full force next year,” said festival director Victoria Ju, citing COVID-era burnout and limited volunteer capacity.

Two paintings hung inside Wing Luke Museum

The Evergreen Echo

The Wing Luke Museum provided the perfect venue for the event—its namesake for the first Asian American elected to public office in the Pacific Northwest and its multiple levels filled with exhibits on Asian American art, history, and culture open to festivalgoers.

Reflections & Legacies

The sole screening of the evening went to Reflections & Legacies, a collection of documentary-style short films which illustrated different histories of Southeast Asian refugees and migrants into the US. The three chapters, titled Saigon to Seattle, Home-land: Hmong American Women, and Taking Root: Southeast Asian Resettlement Stories in Philadelphia, totaled just over 90 minutes but were able to cover deeply personal stories of cultural erasure as has been the experience of the South Vietnamese, racial discrimination as faced by women of the Hmong people, and mass incarceration as refugees of the Indochina Wars faced upon their resettlement to the US. “We are here because they were there”—a recurring line that connects the US’s foreign policy to the seeding of Southeast Asian communities in the States.

The collection works beautifully combining personal stories to peoples’ histories and public policy. Like the story of a building of tenants becoming an organized community that manages to win their basic rights as renters. Absolutely unreal footage of the carnage of the Vietnam War interspersed with human testimonials draws uncomfortable parallels with the conflicts of today and underlie the powerful sense that we still live with the vestiges of Cold War imperialism.

Seattle, ICE, and Ngoc Phan’s story

After the credits rolled we were introduced to Ngoc Phan, a Pierce County woman of Vietnamese descent. Her story would have been quite at home in Reflections & Legacies, but hearing her tell it live at the Seattle Asian American Film Festival emphasized how real and how dark the experience can be for migrants and refugees.

Ngoc was there that evening because she is on a mission to have her husband Tuan freed from ICE custody so the two of them may begin their lives together now that Tuan has completed a 25-year prison sentence. 

According to Ngoc, he was scheduled to be released in March of this year but on the day of his release was taken into ICE custody. Though he had permanent legal residency status, this was stripped and gave way to his deportation. The couple had expected his deportation, and they had planned to begin anew in Vietnam. Instead, ICE took him in the middle of the night and attempted to secretly have him deported to South Sudan, a nation mired in a sufficiently violent civil war for which the US State Department has issued a travel advisory and ordered its diplomatic staff to get out.

Due to legal conflicts between the courts and ICE over (the lack of) due process, this plan was also diverted, leading Tuan to be sent to what Ngoc described as a “shipping container” in Djibouti where he awaits further decisions from the US government.

Her story reminds us that history is always right now and as such comes with a call to action. Ngoc is currently organizing calls to Governor Ferguson to use his pardon power to resolve the situation so she and Tuan can finally be reunited, though so far Ferguson’s office has not issued a response.

Father-son duo Phu and Peter performing

The Evergreen Echo

Reception and Wrapup

The rest of the evening was more lighthearted, featuring Cambodian cuisine, a live Chinese lion dance, the musical fusion of father-son duo Phu and Peter, and the cool beats of DJ Magic Sean. Patrons were given two drink tickets and free reign of the museum, making space for the festival to go beyond the screen and into a community of people and volunteers.

“Our film festival has always been a very social justice-focused, and so our focus is to provide as much opportunity and space within the community for people to learn about the histories, but also for there to be call to actions and to put them in touch with organizations that they can follow up or call to actions. …We always have opportunities for people to not only volunteer with us, we’re also hiring for staff volunteer positions as well.”

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This year’s SAAFF films are available for streaming through https://www.seattleaaff.org until June 29, 2025, including the free Native Hawaiian Showcase program.