Bad Axe (2022)
Director: David Siev Run Time: 102 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2022
Starring: Austin Turmell, Chun Siev, Jaclyn Siev, Michael Meinhold, Skyler Janssen
Country: United States
Language: English
About the film:
Audience Award winner at the 2022 South by Southwest Film Festival. Gateway Film Center presented the Ohio Premiere as part of Cinema Columbus 2022.
A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as a closely knit Asian-American family living in a rural Michigan community fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a global pandemic, racial tensions, and generational scars from Cambodia’s Killing Fields.
“essential when we tell the story of how 2020 shaped this country”
—Brian Tallerico for Roger Ebert
About the filmmaker:
David Siev is a New York-based filmmaker born and raised in the Midwest. After graduating from the University of Michigan’s film school, he began his career working on a wide range of film and television projects for Jeff Tremaine, including producing and shooting Netflix’s The Dirt (2019) and Bad Trip (2021). As the child of a Cambodian refugee, he grew up listening to stories of surviving the genocide that claimed the lives of at least 2 million people. Sharing his family’s stories, Siev made his directorial debut with the short film Year Zero (2018), winner of Best Short awards at the DC Asian American Pacific Film Festival, Vancouver Asian Film Festival, Manhattan International Film Festival, and Hell’s Half-Mile Film Festival.
His intimate and moving debut feature documentary Bad Axe (2022) had its World Premiere at SXSW 2022 before screening at the Gateway Film Center for its Ohio Premiere as part of Cinema Columbus 2022.
See our upcoming films