RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com
This weekend marks a big milestone for the Asian Film Festival of Dallas (AFFD). Opening today, the festival will celebrate a quarter century of celebrating and supporting Asian and Asian-American filmmakers while sharing the rich diversity of Asian cultures through cinema. Over the past 25 years, AFFD has presented more than 600 films fostering cultural understanding through the power of storytelling. The festival runs Thursday through Sunday with all screenings held at the Angelika Film Center.
The 2026 festival includes one world premiere, two North American premieres, and one U.S. premiere as well as retrospective screenings, short films and more totaling almost 30 films in all.
“Celebrating AFFD’s 25th anniversary is especially meaningful to me because my journey with the festival began as a fan in the audience, then as a volunteer, board member, and now Co-Executive Director,” David Chong said in a press release.
Chong took on the new position with deep ties to the festival having started with the organization in 2016. He now brings a queer perspective to the festival leadership. The festival has often featured LGBTQ+ stories in its programming . He spoke about this year’s festival and what he sees on the horizon for AFFD as well as offering up some of his own favorite queer Asian/Asian-American films.
Dallas Voice: You have gone from volunteer to now leadership. How do you describe this new position as co-executive director of AFFD?
We’ve had both a single director and sometimes a co-executive director. One of the reasons we’re doing it this year is as a way for me to get up to speed and get a sense of the details, which can be handed off to me depending on the future structure. We’re all volunteers and people have their specific areas so the co-director helps keep everything moving. I think mostly we’re here to keep things rolling and have a bit of oversight. But it is quite a lot to handle – this year in particular. It’s been nice having a co-director. This would have been a lot for just Tommy [Schubert] to handle on his own and he’s a great director. He’s been involved for a long time, so he has that experience with the festival but it has been nice to split up some festival duties for this year.
What brought you to the film festival to begin with?
I studied film as an undergrad and worked in commercial and documentary TV so I’ve always kind of had a connection to it. I’m still generally a fan, of film and film festivals. So this was an aspect of bringing a community together and telling our stories that celebrates Asian culture.
I was really excited when I moved to Dallas from California to learn that we had one for like a decade when I moved here and that it was going strongly. So I started volunteering and I think sometime around 2023, they were looking for new board members, and I decided to apply because I wanted to get more involved. It’s been nice to become a bigger part of the organization.
What would you say is your vision as co-ED?
That’s a great question. To be honest, I think right now I’m just getting my feet wet with the festival and that’s a lot of work getting the festival off the ground. There’s so much to the logistics part of it. But I do feel like it’s an opportunity. We’re always reexamining representation and pursuing boundaries beyond what we traditionally present.
What do you want to see in the festival queer wise?
It can be tough because we have 27 movies which sounds like a lot but over four days, it’s a limited amount of space. We’re looking for diversity of countries too and we’re always trying to balance genres too, right? All of those factors that we’re trying to consider is a challenge but I don’t want to have a checklist either so it is very tricky. But I do believe having queer members on the board will remind us all to include that representation as well.
This year, we are feturing 3670. The film happens in North Korea and the gay character is going through so many layers of identity as he’s moving from north to the south. It’s a very different world as you probably imagine. They can’t express any kind of diverse sexuality to begin with but even in South Korea, it’s a difficult place so that to me is a very interesting story and it’s a different take than maybe what we see in the United States. I’m Korean-American so I have a personal connection to how challenging it can be to be sexually diverse in that society,
I want to put you on the spot and ask you – especially as the now-co-executive director of AFFD – what are three queer Asian films that you feel we should all see?
Oh, yeah. Well, number one would be Happy Together. I mean, first of all, it’s Wong Kar-wai who is one of these beloved directors. I remember watching that when I was finishing college and I was just blown away. At the heart of it is this gay relationship, but at the end of the day, it’s a love story. It’s kind of a tumultuous love story, but it’s about people you can relate to.
The Wedding Banquet, by Andrew Ahn, who I know and is a Korean-American director. The original by Ang Lee was interesting because it was also a queer story. Queer themes are at the heart of this but with a different twist and and I thought it was a brilliant modern and funny take on that story.
And I’d say All That We Love with Margaret Cho. She’s such a queer icon herself and we co-presented it at the Oak Cliff Film Festival last year. I believe the director is gay as well and Jesse Tyler Ferguson is her best friend in it.
To view the schedule or purchase tickets and passes, visit AsianFilmDallas.com.