The movie Where We Begin tells the story of Jimmy, a Korean American finding his sense of being in Los Angeles through historic architecture and locations, eluding the real search from within. We explore this journey as he comes to understand how his mother’s lax parenting style may have influenced his identity and sculpted his sense of belonging. In a city with a thriving Korean population, Jimmy finds it hard to connect as he grapples with an evolving sense of identity as he navigates race, interracial relationships and a past that is not his. Like many Asian Americans, Jimmy confronts his identity later in life as he grasps the concepts of race and being a person of color in a society that sees race as binary. Jimmy’s apparently seamless slide between white and black interweaves with his love for historic architecture, and he ultimately realizes he is truly American after all.
Written by Joshua Kwak and co-directed by Kwak and Fidencio Casas, Where We Begin features an ensemble cast including Joshua Kwak (‘Jimmy’), A. Leslie Kies (‘Becky’), Rawle D. Lewis (‘Charles’) and Janice Sonia Lee as (‘Jenny’).
