Filmmaker Angeline Gragasin is no stranger to blurring the line between art and artifact. In her short film Myself When I Am Real, she invites us into a Filipino Christmas party in suburban Wisconsin circa Y2K, shot entirely on MiniDV to resemble a found home movie. What begins as an awkward holiday gathering evolves into a subtle, unsettling study of assimilation, social performance, and family tension. Gragasin draws from her own experience as a second-generation Filipino American to craft a story that feels both hyper-specific and universally human.
In this interview, we dive into the unusual inspirations behind the film—from Charles Mingus to competitive holiday pageantry—what it means to “save face” when you’re an outsider, and why lo-fi storytelling might be the most honest kind. Indie filmmakers, take notes—this is how you turn limitations into lightning.
Your title intrigues me. What is the inspiration for Myself When I am Real?
The film is loosely based on my own childhood, growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, a small Midwestern town. It initially took shape as a feature-length screenplay about a Filipino single mother and her American-born teenage daughter, who recently relocated to Racine. I wrote the first draft of this script in 2019, in my final year of graduate film school.
One day, I was in class workshopping my script with other screenwriters in my MFA program, and my thesis advisor asked, “Are there Filipinos in Racine?” He thought it would be interesting to see Annette, an outsider character, relating to other Filipinos. The answer is yes, there are other Filipinos, but a very small minority. It hadn’t occurred to me to develop other Filipino characters until he asked, and so I went ahead and wrote a whole sequence in which Annette and Jasmine meet Mercedes and discover this secret society of affluent Filipino immigrants living in Racine. But I wanted to show that, just because Annette and Mercedes are both Filipino, this doesn’t necessarily equate to instant belonging. As a working-class immigrant, Annette is entering into a very different social milieu from her own and still struggles to assimilate despite the shared language and culture. This sequence from the feature script is what I eventually excerpted and developed into a short film.
Jasmine (Lianah Sta. Ana) and Esmie (Kristian Espiritu) share a quiet moment during a Filipino Christmas party in Myself When I Am Real, directed by Angeline Gragasin.
“I wanted the film to look like it had been unearthed from a box of forgotten home videos—and hit you like a buried memory.”
The title for the film is borrowed from a song by Charles Mingus, from his 1964 solo album “Mingus Plays Piano.” I listened to this song a lot while writing the script, and eventually decided to rename the project after it as a reminder to myself that this is what the film was about.
Coming from a family of immigrants myself, I find the idea of “saving face” as a mask we put on in social situations fascinating. Almost as if a competition. Can you speak to that with your film?
Yes, I think immigrants are experts at masking and performing—whether it’s race, gender, class, or all of the above, simultaneously. It’s a survival skill outsiders develop and pass on to their children. And then the next generation, who are born and raised in the adopted country, become fluent in the local language and culture, and develop an even more refined skill set as social performers—what is often referred to as “code switching.” I think all children of immigrants can relate to this and know exactly what I’m talking about.
I think the competitive quality of this performance is directly related to the survival instinct, which is stronger in people who are insecure in their social status, who fear they could lose it all at any moment. There’s more at stake for working-class people, and when there’s more at stake, the tendency is to work even harder to conform, to assimilate, to please or accommodate those who they perceive have higher status or power. What’s interesting to me is exploring what consequences this status-seeking social performance has within families. This tension—the conflict between public performance and private reality—is what I’m exploring in the relationship between Annette and Jasmine.
What decisions were behind creating a MiniDV look for your film from an audience perspective?
I decided I wanted the film to look and feel like a real-life home movie. I initially thought to shoot on VHS. I brought this idea to my DP, Yujin Yohe, who loved the idea, but he pointed out that in the year 2000, consumers had already moved from VHS to MiniDV. It was his idea to shoot on the Canon XL 2, a prosumer MiniDV camcorder that Thomas Vinterberg used for Festen in 1998. We watched and discussed the film together in minute detail, analyzing almost frame by frame how and why the camera was used. I thought it was brilliant. I was excited by the creative challenge of using a cheap, simple camera to tell a complex, nuanced story. I was betting on the fact that, if my storytelling was strong enough—if the camerawork and performances were naturalistic and convincing—audiences would appreciate the visual style for bringing an added realism and authenticity to the film. Which I’m happy to say they do, based on audience feedback from our festival run.
What is your background as a filmmaker, and where does Myself When I Am Real fall on your journey?
I am mostly self-taught, with the exception of screenwriting. I have an MFA in Screenwriting from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema and a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago, with a focus on Theater and Performance Studies. At Chicago, I studied philosophy, poetry, aesthetics, and the entire history and theory of drama, reading and performing everything from Greek tragedy and comedy to Shakespeare to Ibsen and Chekhov and all the great 20th-century American playwrights. Then I got into experimental theatre and improvisation and trained extensively in clown, mask, mime, dance, and movement—all of which inform my work as a filmmaker. This is the foundation for my work as a writer-director.
Director Angeline Gragasin attends CAAMFest, presented by the Center for Asian American Media. (Photo by Justin Chu)
“Immigrants are experts at masking. It’s not just assimilation—it’s performance for survival.”
I began experimenting with film and video in my mid-20s, learning by doing, and by collaborating with other young filmmakers who had themselves gone to film school. I moved to Los Angeles and later to New York, and ran a production company for a few years, producing and directing low-budget short films in collaboration with other young indie filmmakers. In my early 30s, I decided to go back to school for screenwriting, where I was able to write three original feature-length scripts, as well as a few treatments for adaptations. All while watching and studying all kinds of narrative cinema from all over the world. I was also writing for Screen Slate at the time, which introduced me to a lot of arthouse and repertory cinema I hadn’t encountered in film school.
I think a turning point in my development as a filmmaker was discovering experimental and creative nonfiction filmmaking through fellowships at UnionDocs and The Flaherty Film Seminar. I began to develop a taste for documentaries that look like fiction films and fiction films that look like documentaries. Myself When I Am Real is my first project in this vein; it’s a film that blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction, and the first film I’ve made that really feels truly original and personal, unapologetically authentic to my own perspective and values as an artist.
Who are your inspirations as a filmmaker in regards to the style of filmmaking you are pursuing?
Agnès Varda. Krzysztof Kieślowski. Kelly Reichardt. Justine Triet. My friends Leslie Tai (How To Have An American Baby) and Sarah Friendland (Familiar Touch) have been huge inspirations to me lately, and encourage me to keep going, to keep making work in my own style and on my own terms.
What’s your best piece of advice for filmmakers trying to tell a culturally specific story while still aiming for universal resonance?
Collaborate with an outsider, someone from outside your culture. I co-wrote this script with Elisha Mlotek, another screenwriter from my MFA program. I asked Elisha to read and give feedback on a first draft. His feedback was so thoughtful and constructive, I decided to invite him to co-write the film with me. Even though we come from very different cultural backgrounds, we share the same values artistically and otherwise. Before this project, Elisha had no previous exposure to Filipino culture or midwestern culture, which was actually helpful because he brought an outside perspective to the story. Working with an outsider helped me think objectively about what was working and what wasn’t, and how the average viewer might interpret (or misinterpret) the film.
Writer-director Angeline Gragasin, photographed in a quiet garden while developing her feature film Myself When I Am Real. (Photo by Michael Stephen Brown)
“I was betting that if the story was strong enough, audiences wouldn’t care that it was shot on a glorified camcorder. And I was right.”
Our top priority was character development. We focused all our attention and energy on writing complex, nuanced characters with conflicting needs and wants—on the psychology of the characters. Audiences will respond to even the most seemingly “foreign” stories as long as the characters’ actions are believable. It’s hard work, doing psychoanalysis on your fictional characters, but necessary, I think, to write a relatable and believable script.
What is next for your short film, Myself When I am Real, and for you as a filmmaker?
We’re screening at Palm Springs International ShortFest this week, with more screenings to come, and moving forward with continued development of the feature film version of Myself When I Am Real.
I’m also in development with another project called Look But Don’t Touch, produced by Anne-Laure Berteau of Because The Night Productions. That project is a French language production, set and produced in France. I’ve recently begun volunteering at VISIONS Center on Blindness as part of the research process for this film, which we plan on shooting in 2026. But most of my time is spent reading, writing, watching films, and listening to piano music. My partner is a classical composer and pianist, and I get to hear him practice all day, every day. He’s actually composing the music for Look But Don’t Touch. It’s very inspiring and stimulating to live with a composer. I highly recommend it to all filmmakers
