Angeline Gragasin talks about Myself When I Am Real

How do you tell a story that feels like a memory, a secret… and a home movie all at once?

In this candid conversation, we speak with Angeline Gragasin, writer-director of the powerful “Myself When I Am Real”, which screened at the 2025 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. A hybrid of family mystery, personal archive, and diasporic meditation, the film blends raw MiniDV aesthetics with tender narrative to explore identity, memory, and mother-daughter bonds across generations.

We talk about:
🎞️ Why she shot on MiniDV and how the format shaped the story
👁️ The hidden presence behind the camera and crafting POV mystery
👩‍👧 Whether the central relationship reflects her own Filipino-American experience
🎤 Matchmaking, karaoke, and cultural inheritance in the diaspora
🎬 Casting Lianah Sta. Ana, Therese Dizon and working with Tina Chilip on-screen
🏫 Balancing life as a filmmaker and professor at Parsons School of Design
🌏 The experience of making art in the U.S. as a diasporic storyteller
💡 And what’s next on the horizon for this singular voice in Asian American cinema This is a conversation about finding truth through artifice, and the ways memory and performance blur when we try to tell our stories—especially in diaspora.
📽️ Don’t miss this deeply insightful and warmhearted interview with one of the most exciting indie voices in Asian American filmmaking today.

This is a conversation about finding truth through artifice, and the ways memory and performance blur when we try to tell our stories—especially in diaspora.