Sue Ding
Sue Ding is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Los Angeles. Her work explores race, gender, and diaspora through the lens of visual culture and place-based storytelling. Sue directed the short documentaries The Claudia Kishi Club (SXSW) and Makeover Movie (IDFA), as well as an Emmy Award-winning episode of the docuseries Artbound. Her films can be found on Netflix, PBS, The New York Times, and Vimeo Staff Picks. She has also screened internationally at venues including Antimatter [Media Art], Mujerdoc, and Copenhagen Contemporary. In 2023, she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Sue will be working with Mentor Bao Nguyen during the CAAM Fellowship.
Project: Rice Rocket Revolution
Rice Rocket Revolution explores the story of the import car community—from its roots in Asian American youth culture to its explosion onto movie screens and racetracks around the world. Together, import car enthusiasts defied xenophobia and racism, transformed the pop culture landscape, and created a vibrant Asian American community.
Manish Khanal
Manish Khanal is a Nepali-American documentary filmmaker and producer born in South Florida and based in Oakland, California. His passion for filmmaking stems from his belief in the power of the archive to preserve and illuminate untold stories. This conviction drives his work exploring cultural and communal identity, resilience, and the intricate relationships between people and place. His creative approach, while constantly evolving, blends observational techniques with intimate character studies. He recently co-directed Carl Runs the Paper, a documentary chronicling the life of Carl Butz, a 73-year-old widower who saved California’s oldest weekly newspaper. The film has screened at festivals across the United States, including Mammoth Lakes Film Festival and Filmfort at Treefort Music Fest, and received a 2023 Mountainfilm Commitment Grant. In 2023, Manish was named a Knight Hero by IF/THEN Shorts, the Miami Film Festival, and The Knight Foundation. He holds a Master of Journalism from UC Berkeley and has been working at Citizen Film since 2022, where he contributes to multiple documentary projects. Manish will be working with Mentor Bing Liu during the CAAM Fellowship.
Project: Untitled Nepali Diaspora Project
A personal documentary following filmmaker Manish Khanal as he retraces his family’s migration from Nepal to America, while confronting its present-day impact. As his parents contemplate returning to their homeland, his uncle dreams of leaving it behind—revealing the tension between the promise of migration and the persistent pull of our ancestral homes.
Angad Singh
Angad Singh (@angadgsingh) is an independent filmmaker and journalist from suburban Georgia, based in New York City. He began making short documentaries about the Sikh-American experience at age 13 in response to discrimination he and others around the country were facing after 9/11. Singh graduated with a bachelors in political science from Columbia University, and joined VICE News where he led field productions of short news documentaries around the world, covering popular uprisings, environmental justice, and indigenous issues. His Emmy and award-winning work with VICE News resulted in his blacklisting and deportation from India, making global headlines in 2022. As part of the CAAM fellowship, Singh will be working on a documentary about India’s crackdown on its diaspora; his film reflects on both his personal experience, and that of the broader Sikh diaspora in the aftermath of the assassination of the leader of one of the most prominent Gurdwaras (a Sikh place of worship), in North America. Angad will be working with Mentor Ursula Liang during the CAAM Fellowship.
Project: Hunting Lions
After India targets Sikh activists in assassination plots across North America, a Sikh-American journalist, banned from India for his award winning reporting, investigates the murder plots. He uncovers 40 years of transnational repression that goes back to a genocide his family survived before migrating to the US and Canada.