Smoking Tigers Writer / Director So Young Shelly Yo and Producer Guo Guo are here to chat making the film on a super constrained budget, childhood traumas (including the SATs), and navigating collaboration.
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More about Smoking Tigers
Staggered by the separation of her parents, a Korean-American girl struggles to find herself. Caught between supporting both parents in their work while longing for their old life together and burdened by the responsibility of a younger sibling, few things seem to be falling into place. Upon starting a new year of high school among wealthy elites, she also has to balance the duality of her new friends and low-income reality.
More about So Young Shelly Yo
So Young Shelly Yo is a Korean American filmmaker whose work has been supported by HBO, SFFILM, BAFTA, Film Independent, Sloan and others.
Shelly’s feature film, Smoking Tigers, was the winner of Tribeca & AT&T’s untold stories and was awarded best screenplay, best performance and a special jury mention for the Nora Ephron prize at the 2023 Tribeca film festival.
Prior to Smoking Tigers, Shelly created many award-winning short films including Soft Sounds of Peeling Fruit and Moonwalk with Me.
Shelly has worked in television and commercials alongside powerhouse female filmmakers such as showrunners Charlotte Stoudt (The Morning Show, Pieces of Her), Megan Martin (Animal Kingdom) and award-winning director Kim Gehrig (Apple, Honda, Nike). Shelly has also directed and edited work for SNL, Levi’s and AllBirds.
More about Guo Guo
Based in LA and holds an MFA in producing at the AFI Conservatory, Guo Guo’s producing credits include SMOKING TIGERS (2023), Tribeca AT&T Untold Stories Winner; BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER (2022), Sundance and Berlinale official selection feature documentary; AYKA (2018), Palme d’Or nominated and winner of Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival; 12 CITIZENS (2015), best picture at the Rome International Film Festival; MEIDUO (2018), a Shanghai International Film Festival Media Award nominee; Amazon Prime’s SOFT SOUNDS OF PEELING FRUIT that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival;
HBO Max’s MASS AVE, winner of DGA Student Film Awards; as well as 44-episode Chinese TV Series BE WITH YOU that has enjoyed over 1 billion views; UN COP26 premiered docu-series FOOD 2050 that shot in 8 different countries. Guo Guo able to communicate fluently in English and Mandarin.
Smoking Tigers is streaming now on Max.