Throughout our lives, we have both examined our relationship to race and what it means to disappear into an identity, to feel like you are not enough of an identity, to live in a society where our racial identities don’t have a proper home. As collaborators and close friends, we have always been inspired to create from subjects that sit unresolved in our own heads, and through a place of safety and support, we have pushed each other to look at uncomfortable topics and ask questions that we know are being left out of mainstream rhetoric. While introspecting and having conversations we realized the threads of internalized racism are often in the fabric of what we believe to be our identities, our desires, our dreams and visions for ourselves and the families we want to create. Both of us have been grateful to discuss these things and make discoveries with each other — and with our communities at large — which is what we hope to achieve with this piece: creating an opportunity to open conversations. We want to encourage other people to think critically about the lives they’ve created and their own desires to look into what is choice and what could be subliminal societal messaging that lead to these. Though we are coming at this story from different perspectives, we share similar feelings and questions of identity and erasure.

VANILLA is a reckoning between what is instinctual and what is learned; an inquisition on what we have control over. Much like the experience of being Asian American, the horror elements throughout our film are creeping and subliminal. Along with the terror of whiteness, we are seeking to directly implicate our main character Angie as well as our audience throughout this journey. VANILLA is a reckoning that is uncomfortable, exciting, electric -- like the many racial questions we are asking each other now as we move past whiteness as the ideal. 

We are excited to bring a story to life that neither of us have ever seen before and a question we've not seen many people ask in our media. Now more than ever, when the Asian identity is finally being recognized as more than a monolith, where our generational pain is being recognized and unfortunately perpetuated, we want to make our voices heard to both celebrate our identities, but also ask each other the hard questions. Without both forces of inquiry, we will not be able to claim a space that feels lived in and authentic. And we want to be part of that essential conversation.