Four AAPI filmmakers to participate in Impact Producer program
For four AAPI storytellers and impact producers, legacy looks like dismantling housing injustice, reshaping sports narratives, championing community healing, and reclaiming Southeast Asian refugee histories.
These powerful themes lie at the heart of the 2025 AAPI Futures Impact Producer Fellowship, a joint initiative from A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network) and Asian American Futures. The program supports four impact producers working on films rooted in social justice, offering each a $17,000 grant to fuel their film’s impact campaigns. Through mentorship, training, and peer connection, the fellowship is designed to build sustainable, community-rooted strategies that drive long-term change across AAPI communities.
From anti-Asian hate and displacement to erasure in public narratives, AAPI communities face layered, ongoing challenges. That’s why this year’s fellowship theme is legacy, not just in remembering the past, but building a better, more just future informed by our collective history.
“These four exceptional fellows represent the next generation of culture bearers who are using film to build a better future,” shares Eunice Kwon, Director of Partnerships & Programs at Asian American Futures.
“We’re proud to uplift visionary impact producers who share powerful stories of AAPI legacy, moving us toward a more equitable society,” adds PJ Raval, Impact Initiative Co-Lead at A-Doc.
Meet the 2025 impact producer fellows and their feature films
The 2025 AAPI Futures Impact Producer Fellowship brings together four visionary storytellers who are using film to confront social justice issues within AAPI communities. Each fellow is driven by a personal connection to their stories, weaving their lived experiences with advocacy to spark change.
Yennie Lee: Slumlord Millionaire
Yennie Lee brings 15 years of experience in philanthropy, design, social innovation, and storytelling for social change. She has worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IDEO, and Participant Media. Lee has led award-winning social impact campaigns for both narrative and documentary films, including Dark Waters (Focus Features), American Utopia (HBO), Final Account (Focus Features), Found (Netflix), The Right to Read (Tribeca Films), and Slumlord Millionaire (PBS). A proud second-generation Korean American and Californian born in Oakland, raised in Berkeley, and now based in Los Angeles. She is an Advisory Council Member for the Corita Art Center.
Slumlord Millionaire, directed and produced by Steph Ching and Ellen Martineza and produced by Nicole Tsien, is a feature documentary about gentrification and the U.S. housing crisis. The film follows seven tenants in New York City, highlighting the human toll of gentrification, the lack of accountability in city politics, and the widening wealth gap. The film underscores what is possible when communities organize collectively to challenge displacement
The Slumlord Millionaire Impact Campaign seeks to highlight the growing national housing crisis and mobilize support for housing and tenants’ rights across the U.S. Specifically within AAPI communities, it aims to dismantle the “housing model minority myth,” which renders the struggles of millions of AAPI tenants invisible.
Reina Bonta: Maybe it’s Just the Rain
Reina Bonta is a Filipina American award-winning filmmaker and professional football player. Her narrative short film, LAHI, premiered at Academy Award-qualifying film festivals and won the Audience Award at the San Diego Filipino Film Festival. Reina has also worked as an Archival Producer for Judy Blume Forever (Sundance 2023) and is the Executive Producer for a feature film about AAPI activism in NYC. As a professional soccer player, Reina represented the Philippines in their debut at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Maybe It’s Just the Rain follows the historic debut of the Filipinas at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, where they made history by scoring the country’s first-ever World Cup goal. It is a short documentary film that explores this cornerstone moment in Filipino sports, and an intimate trip between granddaughter and grandmother to her lola’s province in the Philippines, underscoring what representing the Filipino flag at the World Cup truly means to the diasporic Filipinas team.
Maybe Its Just the Rain Impact Campaign seeks to close the gaping hole in Filipino girls grassroots football programs, by implementing a three-pronged approach: a full-day “professional football experience” camp for youth girls in the Filipino province of Dumaguete, a revitalized soccer pitch, fitted it with a mural of Filipina athlete icons, and the creation of a digital zine of short stories, recounting true first-hand anecdotes from young Filipina athletes that will be accessible to wider audiences. It will foster both a long-lasting healthy physical environment, inviting more young girls onto the football pitch, as well as a necessary shift in the misogynistic model of AAPI/Philippine athletics through a digital asset designed to inspire empathy and change.
Carlo Velayo: Nurse Unseen
Carlo Velayo is a Film Independent Spirit Award-nominated Producer, a Berlinale VFF Talent Highlight Awardee, and the inaugural San Francisco Film New American Fellow. Velayo has produced two narrative features, including Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca and Jessica M. Thompson’s The Light of the Moon. In the non-fiction space, Carlo was Senior Producer on Michele Josue’s Netflix Original documentary series Happy Jail, and is collaborating again with Michele on the documentary feature Nurse Unseen.
Nurse Unseen, directed by Michele Josue, is a feature documentary that explores the little-known history and humanity of the unsung Filipino-American nurses who risked their lives on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic while facing a resurgence of anti-Asian hate in the streets.
The impact campaign focuses on the mental healthcare of nurses by using a screening of Nurse Unseen to encourage personal reflection in guided talking circles, developed and led by trained mental health professionals.
Lan Dinh: Taking Root
Lan Dinh is the co-founder and co-executive director of VietLead, a grassroots organization serving Vietnamese and Southeast Asian communities in Philadelphia and South Jersey. A daughter of Vietnamese refugees, she grew up in West Philadelphia and Upper Darby, drawing inspiration from her parents’ resilience and land stewardship. Dinh has worked to build intergenerational leadership and advance land and food sovereignty through community organizing since 2015 training over 500 young organizers through VietLead’s youth leadership program and managed its half-acre community farm, fostering connections between communities of color, land, and storytelling.
Taking Root is a community-organizer-produced documentary exploring the legacy of Southeast Asian displacement and resistance as a result of and impact of the conclusion of the Vietnam War. It unpacks the refugee experience while addressing the generational trauma rooted in U.S. military intervention and failed resettlement policies. Told over four episodes, the series unpacks the refugee experience, providing critical historical context for Southeast Asians in the U.S. while mobilizing present and future generations to engage in racial and economic justice. that examines the legacy of Southeast Asian displacement and resistance. Through the stories of families impacted by deportation, the series delves into the trauma of displacement and the fight for belonging.
The Taking Root Tour, organized by the Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN), will use community-driven storytelling and organizing to mobilize SEA communities in support of the Southeast Asian Relief and Responsibility (SEARR) Campaign—a federal policy platform demanding U.S. accountability for its role in the wars in Southeast Asia and an end to SEA deportations.
These four fellows represent the next wave of AAPI storytellers who are not only sharing powerful narratives but actively shaping how AAPI stories are told, understood, and remembered. By integrating their lived experiences with impactful campaigns, they’re building legacies that honor the past while paving the way for a more equitable future.
As these fellows carry out their campaigns across the country, they remind us that storytelling is more than a creative act; it’s a tool for liberation, identity reclamation, and future-building.
Creating future impact now – Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc) and Asian American Futures
The AAPI Futures Impact Producer Fellowship is a collaborative effort between A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network) and Asian American Futures. It’s designed to empower AAPI storytellers by providing mentorship, financial support, and community resources, ensuring that critical stories receive the attention they deserve.
A-Doc (Asian American Documentary Network) is a national network supporting Asian American documentary filmmakers, creating pathways for authentic storytelling through grants, community-building, and professional development.
Asian American Futures is dedicated to uplifting AAPI narratives and building an equitable future through grantmaking, advocacy, and partnerships that center community voices and storytelling.
Together, these organizations are investing in the future of AAPI stories, ensuring that filmmakers and impact producers not only tell powerful stories but also create lasting social change.
