Directed by first-time feature film director So Young Shelly Yo, here is the official trailer for ‘Smoking Tigers’ an independent film that tells the story of a young Korean-American girl and her struggle of growing up as she navigates her years of entering adulthood.

The independent film acquired funding by winning the Untold Stories pitching program at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. It had its world premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival where it won several awards including Best Performance in a US Narrative Feature and Best Screenplay in a US Narrative Feature.

Starring in Smoking Tigers are Ji-Young Yoo, Jun-Ho Jeong, Jung Joon-Ho, Abin Andrews, Erin Choi, and Erin Yoo.

Release Date

Directed by So Young Shelly Yo, ‘Smoking Tigers’ opens in select US theaters in Los Angeles August 16, 2024, and will also be available to stream on Max on August 23, 2024.

Synopsis

Set in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, Smoking Tigers is a portrait of a lonely 16-year-old Korean American girl named Hayoung who is taken under the wings of three wealthy students she meets at an elite academic boot-camp. As she falls deeper into their world, Hayoung works harder to hide her problematic family and lower-income background from her new friends, only to discover the bittersweet pains of adulthood that will forever shape her life.

In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, director Shelly Yo commented on the story of the film and their experience winning the 2022 Untold Story award, saying “For us, Smoking Tigers is a very intimate story and a story focused on a female Korean American character, and those stories can be hard to get noticed in the Hollywood landscape. When we heard of Untold Stories where they uncover stories that normally wouldn’t have the chance to be told in Hollywood, we knew it was the right opportunity at the right time.”

Reviews

Siddhant Adlakha in a JoySauce.com review praised the film, writing “Smoking Tigers may be Yo’s first feature film, but it beats with the kind of wisdom that so few modern indies of its cultural scope ever achieve, unearthing a tale of Asian American life without resting on the laurels of superficial recognition through verbose posturing. It dives much deeper than that, wading through the ugliness of how poverty constricts immigrant and first-gen dreams, while exploring how we’re only able to see slivers of our parents’ lives until we share in their adult experiences, and turning even the offensive odor of a parent’s cigarette smoke into a delicate memory.”

Matt Hudson in a What I Watched Tonight review gave the film a 10/10 score, writing “Smoking Tigers is a relatively simple film, but one that just gets everything right. It’s beautifully shot, wonderfully paced, smartly written, well-acted, and has a strong emotional undercurrent – I absolutely adored this movie.”

Official Trailer

Watch the official trailer for ‘Smoking Tigers’.