In the Making

The Future of Hmong Storytelling & Innovation in film-making

Saturday, December 6, 2025 | 4-6:30pm CT
In Progress, 213 Front Ave, St. Paul, MN 55117

This gathering was all about reflecting and honoring our pioneering moments and experiences — as well as, lifting up the next generation of creators — and talking honestly about what it takes to build, imagine, and sustain a creative life. The screening explored how early career Hmong artists are redefining storytelling through film, music, design, and digital media and what the journey of innovation looks like in real time: the risks, the breakthroughs, the questions and the possibilities ahead.

indigo / lucy vang / circa 2017

Tsug 13 Hnub / Chue Xiong / circa 2020

This 3 minute excerpt provides a powerful and humorous introduction to this feature film which presents a collection of 3 Horror comedies revolving around 1 theme. The theme that someone who dies will return within 13 days. This exciting anthology will have you scared, emotionally sad, and laughing your butts off.

hmong organization - episode 5 / May Lee yang & peter yang / circa 2024

In this episode of Hmong Organization, Mairy hosts an event designed to empower the women and girls at HO—but her colleagues become a little more inspired than anyone anticipated. The episode brings the series’ playful humor to questions of empowerment, workplace dynamics, and the sometimes unpredictable realities of community-based nonprofit work.

Hmong Organization is a limited mockumentary web series following the everyday shenanigans of a Hmong nonprofit and the people who work there. The project debuted with a pilot in 2018 and was reintroduced in 2024 as a nine-episode mini-series, which began its YouTube release on November 29, 2024.

hmong organization - episode 6 / May Lee yang & peter yang / circa 2024

In this episode of Hmong Organization, The women and girls of HO give men a taste of their own medicine.. The episode brings the series’ playful humor to questions of empowerment, workplace dynamics, and the sometimes unpredictable realities of community-based nonprofit work.

Hmong Organization is a limited mockumentary web series following the everyday shenanigans of a Hmong nonprofit and the people who work there. The project debuted with a pilot in 2018 and was reintroduced in 2024 as a nine-episode mini-series, which began its YouTube release on November 29, 2024.

history of hmong coins / dan yang / circa 2025

This excerpt from Dan Yang’s work-in-progress documentary The History of Hmong Coins explores the complex history of French colonial silver currency in Indochina and its eventual incorporation into traditional Hmong garments and adornment. Once connected to systems of commerce and colonial taxation, these coins were transformed within Hmong communities into portable wealth and objects carrying cultural and familial significance. The film considers how this transformation reflects a larger history of adaptation and resilience, as objects associated with colonial power took on new meaning within Hmong cultural traditions.

wb lub tsev / Chue Xiong / circa 2022

Wb Lub Tsev is a Hmong short film released by Tshajlij Productions and the final installment in the Thaub Dabsss series. Blending tragic romance with horror, the film draws upon Hmong ghost stories, spiritual beliefs, and supernatural traditions to explore love, loss, memory, and the bonds that can remain after death.

Through its use of spirits and otherworldly encounters, Wb Lub Tsev places a contemporary cinematic love story within a distinctly Hmong cultural framework. The film demonstrates how a new generation of Hmong filmmakers is adapting elements of oral storytelling, folklore, and spiritual tradition for the screen, using familiar cultural narratives to create work that is at once dramatic, unsettling, and deeply rooted in Hmong ways of understanding the relationship between the living and the spirit world.

bored / dhoua hli vue / circa 2021

Bored is a deeply personal short film by Dhoua Hli Vue that reflects on isolation, family, and grief during the COVID-19 pandemic. Created while living at home with her two autistic brothers, the film captures the emotional pressures of confinement and disrupted daily life while also exploring Vue’s ongoing grief following the 2017 drowning death of her older sister, Ghia Nah. Through an intimate lens, Bored considers how isolation can bring unresolved emotions to the surface, while revealing the complicated ways family, memory, loss, and love intersect during periods of profound uncertainty.

TSAUS NTUJ NTI / Tou Saiko Lee & cody lee / circa 2021

Tsaus Ntuj NTI explores depression, isolation, and suicidal ideation through the experiences and pressures faced by many Hmong men. Created through a collaboration between artists Tou Saiko Lee and Cody Lee, the music video gives visual and musical expression to struggles that can remain hidden or difficult to discuss, tracing how emotional, cultural, and social pressures can lead someone toward despair. The work brings these experiences into the open, creating space for greater understanding and conversation around mental health within Hmong families and communities.

The chaperone / kazua melissa vang circa 2022

The Chaperone is a semi-autobiographical comedic short film that follows Ghia Na, a teen who must accompany her older sister Hlee Anne when they are out of the house. Ghia Na serves as the chaperone while Hlee Anne rendezvous with her boyfriend in the park. Set amidst the backdrop of the mid-90s and the strict rules that governed Hmong girls’ bodies, this film follows Ghia Na as she befriends other “younger sister” chaperones.