In this week’s Friday Know-It-All, Social Media Coordinator Mia kicks off Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month with a look into some recent Asian American cinema!

Happy Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month! Weird to think about the fact that we’re already a quarter of the way through the 21st century — but man, have these past two-and-a-half decades produced some incredible Asian American film. There have been plenty of great Asian stories told on screen for decades, of course, but over the past 25 years, we’ve really seen an uptick in personal stories actually told by Asian and Asian American directors. From queer romances to adoptee stories, the films we’ve gotten to see in recent years from diasporic directors have really been creating a window into these different vignettes of the Asian American experience, in a way that even I, as an Asian person, have been able to learn a lot from.

No bias here, but some of my all-time favorite romcoms have been directed and written by Asian American filmmakers, and more now than ever, also feature majority Asian principal casts. Of course, you’ve got everyone’s go-to in-flight movie, 2018’s “Crazy Rich Asians,” but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

“Fresh Off the Boat” creator Nahnatchka Khan’s 2019 film directorial debut “Always Be My Maybe” may be the perfect movie. Starring comedy powerhouses Ali Wong and Randall Park, the latter of whom Khan previously worked with on “Fresh Off the Boat,” the film also features an excellent supporting cast including James Saito, Daniel Dae Kim, Michelle Buteau, and Karan Soni. It has the perfect combination of funny and heartfelt moments, a killer ’90s soundtrack (its title is a play on Mariah Carey’s hit single “Always Be My Baby”), and an incredible self-parodic appearance from everyone’s favorite wasian king, Keanu Reeves.

The 2020s in particular have been a huge time for queer Asian romcoms. Of course, it’s not like they were invented in the past five years — Alice Wu’s lesbian cult classic “Saving Face” came out back in 2004, and one of the best films of the year so far, Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet,” is based on Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same name.

“The Half of It,” only the second film from Wu after the release of “Saving Face,” is one of the most underrated movies you can find on Netflix. Released in May 2020, it was in my heavy rotation during the pandemic lockdowns; the film follows small-town Washington teen Ellie Chu who ghostwrites essays (and eventually love letters) for her classmates to help her single dad pay the bills. It’s one of the admittedly semi-common modern retellings of the Cyrano story, but with a queer twist — when Ellie finds herself falling for the girl she’s supposed to be helping her friend Paul woo.

Even solely 2025 has been a big moment for queer Asian cinema; April alone saw the releases of both “A Nice Indian Boy” and “Fire Island” director Andrew Ahn’s aforementioned remake of “The Wedding Banquet.” Ahn’s adaptation of the latter completely modernizes the tale with a star-studded cast including Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang, “Saving Face” star Joan Chen, and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung. The cast’s incredible chemistry and physical comedy, coupled with an impressive screenplay really allows the film to shine, and is a stellar follow up to 2022’s Austen-inspired “Fire Island.”

I think South Asian stories aren’t talked about nearly enough in APA discussions, and “A Nice Indian Boy” so totally deserves all of its flowers. From “The Resident” co-creator, filmmaker and actual physician Roshan Sethi, it tells the story of a gay Indian man (played by “Always Be My Maybe”’s Karan Soni, who’s also Sethi’s real-life husband) as he falls in love with an Indian-parent-raised, transracially adopted white man played by Tony Award-winner (and, more importantly, “Glee” star) Jonathan Groff. Of the adoptee diasporic films to come out in recent years, I think it puts a really fresh spin on the trope by featuring a transracially adopted white character and the exploration of the social implications of that relationship on interracial dating, and Soni and Groff both put in fantastic comedic and emotional performances.

Speaking of adoptee stories, 2023’s “Joy Ride” remains one of my favorite comedies while also topping the list of films that made me cry the most. The feature directorial debut of “Crazy Rich Asians” writer Adele Lim, its core quartet features some of the best up-and-coming talent across theatre, comedy, and film — comedians Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu, and Broadway stars Ashley Park and Stephanie Hsu (the latter of whom was robbed of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” but that’s neither here nor there). Quite a ways raunchier than the other films mentioned here, “Joy Ride” (charitably watered-down from the original working title of “Joy F*** Club”) has been described as “the Asian ‘Bridesmaids,’” and certainly lives up to the hype. For all of the strong R-rated comedy, it also has surprising emotional depth as Ashley Park’s adoptee character searches for her birth mother abroad.

There are plenty of other great Asian American films you can watch this month — and all year long! — but these are just some of my personal favorites.