Sacred Moments, Universal Truths: Narrative Shorts at LAAPFF 2025 Capture Grief, Growth, and Grace

September 11, 2025

This year’s Narrative Shorts program included deeply intimate stories that stretch across faiths, families, and generations. From the spiritual whiplash of a jade necklace to the ghost stories hidden in desert winds, these shorts invite us to witness the small, precise ways people choose love -again and again.

A SONG FOR GRACIE

In A Song for Gracie, written by Olivia Simone and directed by David Liu, a young woman with a physical disability processes the loss of her mother through lyrical fragments and quiet epiphanies. The film weaves grief with beauty as Gracie searches for meaning -and music- amid deep emotional loss.

Simone shares, “The film is about two people from different parts of the world, different accents, different color skins going through a very human moment. It’s about seeing past disabilities and into compassion. Knowing that each moment is sacred if you choose to look deeper into your heart and cultivate love -even in the hardest times.”

Liu frames the project as a cinematic fable. “A Song for Gracie is both a love story and a ghost story. It’s about roads once taken and how the past moves in step with the present, asking us to remember every version of ourselves.” He adds, “We wanted to craft a loveetter to a disappearing, often overlooked land -the high desert.”  

Cinematographer Mike Maliwanag helped visually anchor this idea of memory as landscape, building images that evoke stillness, grief, and possibility.

GYOPO

Set in 1995 Seoul, GYOPO explores the interwoven struggles of a Korean family caught between resilience and rupture. Told through the eyes of Ji-Hoon and his siblings, the film navigates generational expectations, personal sacrifice, and the longing for stability amidst cultural transition.

Actor Woohyun Suh reflects, “GYOPO is a direct demonstration and analysis of generational relationships. Four different characters in four different stages of life -all dealing with struggles the others may never fully understand. And yet they continue to sacrifice for each other. That unspoken love is what holds them together.”

Despite its specificity, GYOPO resonates broadly. “Although the film is set in South Korea and spoken in Korean, its themes -familial sacrifice, loss of innocence, the desire to belong -are universal,” says Suh. “This film helps people realize that we, as humans, have more in common than we think.”

GOD & BUDDHA ARE FRIENDS

Writer-director Anthony Ma describes God & Buddha Are Friends as “a traumady -a traumatic comedy.” The film follows 7-year-old Andy after he receives a jade necklace from his Buddhist mother and then visits a devout Christian family. A fiery pastor convinces Andy that his necklace is a devil’s totem, leading to a culture clash that forces the boy to discover his own truth amid the chaos of adult beliefs.

“This story is based on a real moment from my childhood,” says Ma. “It’s a love letter to my mom -a fiercely protective single mother who didn’t back down from anyone. Her strength was admirable, though sometimes intense. This film is my way of reframing the Asian American mother -not as meek or stoic, but as complex, outspoken, and powerful.”

Ma’s personal stakes were profound. “Three days into our crowdfunding campaign, my wife was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She told me to keep going. This project became my therapy -and now she’s cancer-free.”

What makes the film so resonant is its embrace of nuance. “God & Buddha Are Friends doesn’t take sides,” Ma emphasizes. “It leans into the uncomfortable middle, where love and belief can clash. That, to me, is quietly radical.”

Stories That Cross Borders and Beliefs

Whether set in 1990s Seoul, suburban California, or the parched terrain of the high desert, the Narrative Shorts of LAAPFF 2025 share a commitment to nuance. These are stories not about resolving contradiction, but living inside it -where faith and fear, tradition and transformation, memory and healing, can co-exist.