AWC Spotlight | So Young Shelly Yo

So Young Shelly Yo is a first-generation, Korean American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She graduated from the MFA film program at Columbia University, where her thesis film “MOONWALK WITH ME” was awarded faculty honors. Her short films have screened and received accolades at film festivals around the world including the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, SCAD Savannah Film Festival, and the Sarasota Film Festival. As an AWC fellow, she challenged herself with making a short documentary after a number of widely-screened and award-winning narrative shorts.

In June 2022, her debut feature film in development Smoking Tigers won the top prize in the “AT&T Presents: Untold Stories” contest at the Tribeca Festival.

Read more about Shelly’s AWC fellowship experience, her first feature film, and what she has been up to!

Tell us how have you been, and what have you been up to since your AWC fellowship. 

It's been good. My AWC fellowship ended just as the pandemic was starting so I poured all my anxious energy into my AWC short “Crashing Wheels on Concrete”. After that, I was hungry to keep creating and so I started and revisited projects I’d been putting off including the script for “Smoking Tigers”.

What was your AWC Fellowship experience like?

AWC was so nurturing to my creativity. They provided me with the right support to experiment with different types of storytelling, and for me, that was documentary work.

Any memorable moments during AWC?

The moment that comes to mind was this one night at the AWC offices. Each of us had to go up and present our ideas. I remember being terrified, but came out feeling really supported from the thoughtful feedback from the rest of the fellows and mentors.

Tell us about your forthcoming film.

The story [Smoking Tigers] is about a lonely Korean American teenager named Hayoung who starts an academic boot camp, befriends a group of wealthy teens and begins questioning her ideas of family, happiness, and success in America.

Anything you’d like to add? 

These days, I’ve been trying to carve out moments where I’m truly happy and grateful to be doing the work I do.

These moments don’t come very often, so when they do, I make sure to keep it alive.

The interview was edited for space and clarity. Photo courtesy of Shelly Yo.