Yihong Exa Huang’s ‘Fortune House’ Debuts At LA Shorts International Film Festival

Los Angeles based filmmaker Yihong Exa Huang’s Fortune House, a magical realist immigration narrative, makes its world premiere tonight at the LA Shorts International Film Festival. Huang, whose previous shorts include I Hate Love and Just Another Day, talked to CinemAddicts co-host Eric Holmes about the inspiration behind Fortune House.

Directed by Yihong Exa Huang, Fortune House centers on an undocumented Chinese delivery driver who discovers a restaurant that is run by demons. He gambles for his place in America through a risky game of mahjong.

“With a short film, you’re trying to show a glimpse of the world or a human condition,” said Huang, who is an AFI Conservatory graduate. “You can’t really tell more than that because the time is limited. But with a feature, you present the whole world. So for this kind of concept, we wanted to see if it works or not and we have a main character who is going to conquer through every difficulties to reach the end. We also want to see if it’s working or not by showing a glimpse of this world building. Then we can make a decision if we’re going to do more in the future.”

Next up for Fortune House is a hopeful successful festival run that starts tonight. “The reason we were so excited about LA Shorts International Film Festival is because we literally just started a festival run a month ago,” said Huang. “And this is the first news that we got. So we’re really excited for that. After that we will go for more festivals and hopefully get more screenings. And then after a year of a festival run, we will try to do more community based screenings. Then we’re trying to go on streaming and work with some media to publish it somewhere on a media platform.”

Huang is also writing an action comedy feature about a young immigrant who lives in the United States. When his father visits from China to celebrate his son’s graduation, he must hide that he’s dropped out of school and is a drug dealer. The script is currently under rewrites and is still in the financing process. “We will see how it goes after this,” added Huang.

Full interview with Yihong Exa Huang is on CinemAddicts and YouTube:

Catch Fortune House tonight at the LA Shorts International Film Festival at the Regal NoHo West in Los Angeles.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Yihong Exa Huang (@d1g1h1h)