Welcome to LAAPFF 2026

It’s been a tough year. We’ve had tearful goodbyes to one too many members of our VC family. The very existence of festivals like ours and our sibling AANHPI festivals across the country are under threat as funding is stripped away. In the film industry, talk of AI sparks alarm about the future of artistry. This on top of headlines about ICE raids and war. In uncertain times we find ourselves back again as we convene in the familiar. The word “community” gets tossed around a lot here and it feels like now, more than ever, it’s essential for all of us to find it in our work and in each other.

As jobs are threatened by software and computers, we find ourselves once again in the hands of the work of directors, writers, animators, documentarians, and their cast and crews. Amongst them, Festival veterans as well as newcomers whose command of the form are exciting and organic. Injustice and divisiveness runs rampant, yet, once more, we are fortunate to be embraced by their stories. We resonated with their display of empathy, their ability to make us contemplate, their wisdom, and also had some fun along the way. A reminder that cinema is a medium of expression and storytelling, and when realized together optimally, it is a great source of illumination.

Over the past four decades of presenting the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, artists and films have found a home in our space. In this time of overwhelming uncertainty, amid political and financial threats aimed at erasing our histories from collective memory, coming together feels all the more essential to protect. Whether at a gathering, a panel or a screening, it’s time again for us to catch up with old acquaintances or meet new friends and collaborators. Stories, too, can feel familiar, but in isolating times there’s comfort in knowing we feel through life similarly. Especially after this past year, familiar seems necessary. At least until the day we can retire the phrase: history repeats itself. For now, we keep doing this work.

With gratitude,
Visual Communications