Visual Communications Unveils 2027 Armed With a Camera Fellowship, Uplifting Emerging AAPI Filmmakers

(October 20, 2026) Los Angeles, CA - The Visual Communications (VC) team announces six distinguished individuals who head the 2027 Armed with a Camera Fellowship. Nicole Mairose Dizon, Hsiao Hsia Huang, Merry May Ma, Josiah Mendoza, Uday Misra, and Kimberly Xiong roster the 24th edition of Visual Communications’ flagship program for emerging artists. The fellows were selected amongst a pool of 111 applicants. Each final selection stood out with an impressive portfolio, demonstrating promise, a unique voice, and an ability to execute their vision.

The fellowship begins this November and is a year-long program where we will foster community amongst the cohort, provide mentorship for their individual projects, and host professional workshops. The program culminates with the world premiere of their respective final projects at the 43rd Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.   

Since its founding in 2002, the Armed with a Camera Fellowship has sought to nurture and cultivate storytellers from our Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities. Past fellows have gone onto feature film careers, entered into other prestigious artist fellowships, and served in various roles in the entertainment industry. Notable AWC alumni include So Young Shelley Yo (Winner Best Screenplay at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival with her debut feature SMOKING TIGERS), Veialu Aila-Unsworth (Berlinale Talents alum and The Black List’s CAPE LIST), Christopher Makoto Yogi (Sundance screenwriting and directing fellow and director I WAS A SIMPLE MAN), Kristina Wong (performance artist/writer/activist, Guggenheim Fellow, and Pulitzer Finalist, and Mickie Davis (Co-founder of Pilele Projects, an exhibition and workspace in LA supporting Pasifika artists) among many others. While we celebrate the individual achievements of our AWC fellows, Visual Communications is most proud of our work in growing our creative ecosystem. Our fellows play a big part in this network, with many returning as mentors, speakers, programmers, festival guests, and talent. 

“The impact of a program isn’t measured only by the films it produces. It’s also measured by what happens when someone sits in an audience, sees what’s possible, and begins to imagine what they might make themselves,” said Visual Communications’ Managing Director Angela Park. “That's how this community grows. One filmmaker makes something that gives another permission to try. That filmmaker, in turn, returns years later to help someone else find their way.”

This year’s class will be mentored by three members of the VC community: former AWC Fellows Faroukh Virani and Norbert Shieh, and filmmaker Sue Ding. This year’s mentors bring their expertise across multiple filmmaking disciplines. Virani is a veteran editor with over 15 years of experience, including ABC’s HIGH POTENTIAL and LAAPFF feature films SURRENDER (dir. Jess Dang) and PINCH (dir. Uttera Singh). Shieh, whose own work has screened all over the world, is also a gifted director of photography, having lensed the feature films SILENT RIVER (dir Chris Chan Lee) and PAPER MARRIAGE (dir Jeff Man), as well as Zeinabu Irene Davis’ PANDEMIC BREAD. A recent recipient of the Concordia Fellowship and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” Ding is a prolific documentary filmmaker whose work can be seen on several platforms, including THE CLAUDIA KISHI CLUB on Netflix.

Hsiao Hsia Huang 
Hsiao-Hsia “Charlotte” Huang is a Taiwanese writer-director based in Los Angeles. She earned her B.A. in English Literature from Fu Jen Catholic University and her M.F.A. in Film Directing from Chapman University. Her storytelling spans genres, from intimate family dramas to psychological thrillers. She is passionate about inspiring audiences to see everyday life through new perspectives.

Josiah Mendoza
Josiah Mendoza, a 2026 Sundance Ignite Fellow, is a Filipino-American filmmaker and journalist from Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. His nonfiction films aim to interpolate narrative devices to capture the ephemeral quality of memory, finding beauty in the mundane. His work has screened at DOC NYC, Calgary International Film Festival, and Hawaiʻi International Film Festival.

Kimberly Xiong
Kim Xiong is a writer, director, and producer born and raised in Fresno, California. The eldest daughter of Hmong refugees, she creates genre-driven stories exploring family, memory, and transformation. Drawn to mythmaking, she seeks to expand the possibilities of Southeast Asian storytelling through film.

Merry May Ma
Merry May Ma is an LA-based writer/director/producer from Shanghai and a 2026 Visual Communications Armed with a Camera Fellow. Drawing on her passion for philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis, she crafts sensory-driven stories that explore serendipitous connections and the power of the invisible.

Nicole Mairose Dizon 
Nicole Mairose Dizon is a 626-born Filipina-American writer, director, producer, and third space curator, whose work explores strivers, class, and the overlooked. Her insomniac T’boli dreamweaver film won UFF’s Best Narrative Experimental Film. Dizon’s film/TV/music experience spans Scott Free, Amazon’s Blade Runner 2099, Netflix’s Trinity, Goldenvoice and Insomniac.

Uday Misra
Uday Misra (He/Him) is a first-generation Maryland-born, Los Angeles-based filmmaker and former tech worker. He incorporates elements of narrative fiction, interview-based nonfiction, and sensory cinematic technique to craft experiential still and moving image works that illuminate the contemporary lived experiences of neurodivergent South Asian American children of immigrants.

A Commitment to Representation - A Note From Francis Cullado, VC’s Executive Director:
We’re grateful for another Fellowship and are looking forward to creating connections with this year’s Fellows. However, I also want to acknowledge that there is not a Fellow who is Pasifika this year. In recent years, we have re(committed) to having a balance between Asian and Pacific Fellows. This effort is not reflected in this upcoming Fellowship.

This year, only 2 out of 111 applications were Pacific Islander. Deeper work is necessary to have a larger pool of Pasifika artists. We acknowledge that the application requirement of having directed one film is a preexisting barrier. We also need to do better outreach to our Pacific Islander communities and resource the work being done to uplift Pasifika artists. Our outreach to potential applicants and program participants from these communities will be ongoing through the 2027-2028 season.

Who Applied?
We were overwhelmed not only with the quantity, but with the quality of this year’s candidates.  This year’s theme of “Movement” was motivated by the impetus that, in these troubled times, great storytelling is very much essential. In doing so, we discovered a wide range of stories needing to be supported. Thank you again to everyone who applied.

The stories proposed very much reflected the diversity of our applicants, spread across many different ages, genders, and ethnicities. Visual Communications is resolute in our goal of empowering artists and storytellers from all spectrums of the AANHPI community. In an effort of transparency and as a reference for us to recognize disparities for future refinement of the process, we present a demographic breakdown filled out by this year’s applicants.

Age groups
Regarding age, 23.4% of applicants (26) identified as 18-24. 53.15% of applicants (59) identified as 25-34. 20.7% of applicants (23) identified as 25-34. 2.7% of applicants (3) identified as 51+.

Gender
Regarding gender, 46.8% of applicants (52) identified as Female. 45.9% of applicants (51) identified as Male. 7.2% of applicants (8) identified as Genger-nonconforming.

Ethnic Demographics
Regarding gender, 46.8% of applicants (45) identified as East Asian. 29.7% of applicants (33) identified as Southeast Asian. 21.6%% of applicants (24) identified as Mixed Race. 3.6% of applicants (4) identified as South Asian. 1.8% of applicants (2) identified as Central Asian. 1.8% of applicants (2) identified as Pasifika. .9% of applicants (1) identified as Middle Eastern.

Mixed Race Demographics
Regarding mixed race demographics, 75% of applicants (18) identified as partially East Asian.  50% of applicants (12) identified as partially Southeast Asian.  16.6% of applicants (4) identified as partially White.  8.33% of applicants (2) identified as partially Black.  4.16% of applicants (1) identified as partially Pasifika.  4.16% of applicants (1) identified as partially Indigenous.  4.16% of applicants (1) identified as partially Middle Eastern.  4.16% of applicants (1) identified as partially South American.  4.16% of applicants (1) identified as partially South Asian.

Documentary/Narrative
Regarding proposed projects, 67.6% of applicants (75) proposed narrative projects. 32.4% of applicants (36) proposed documentary projects.