Meet Robin Wang | Film Director & Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Robin Wang and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Robin, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
I am a film director and producer who focuses on creative leadership in the making of socially relevant, culturally authentic, and financially successful films. I was born in China, attended high school in Singapore, and graduated from college in the U.S.. My background as a world traveler has cultivated a taste in me for stories about diverse cultures. After gaining a unique worldview and a profound appreciation of history and culture, I aspire to make fiction and documentary films that spotlight stories about underrepresented communities in a heartfelt and authentic way — especially those who live at the intersection of cultures and are minorities among minorities. Like many of my BIPOC colleagues working in Hollywood, I believe films and television are potent tools for the public to understand themselves and each other. Therefore, my brand of directing and producing has always emphasized telling specific stories from an authentic and heartfelt place, staving off generic concepts, cliched melodrama, and genre tropes. I also cultivated a network of collaborators coming from diverse backgrounds and are dedicated to telling stories with authenticity and heart. So far, the projects that I have directed or produced have been screened at a total of seven Oscar-qualifying film festivals, attained awards at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, the Director’s Guild of America, and the Television Academy Foundation, and distributed on Amazon Prime, Dekkoo, and PBS SoCal.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As a film director and producer, my goal is to tell stories that are specific and original, coming from a very heartfelt and authentic place. I am most interested in making coming-of-age Asian-themed comedies and dramas with a blend of bittersweet humor, twisted ethics, and heartfelt realities. As someone who wanders on the margin of cultures, I want to explore the meaning of “home” and “homelessness” against the massive backdrop of cultural displacement and the Asian diaspora. I am also interested in amplifying the voices of the APIQ (Asian Pacific Island Queer) community because intersectional stories such as ours are even more underrepresented. I started to dream of becoming a filmmaker when I was fifteen years old in China after I watched Avatar and Inception in 2010. It was also the time when I decided to study abroad and pursue my dreams in Hollywood. However, my path to pursuing filmmaking professionally has not been smooth. I made my first film in 2011 in Singapore, but it took another six years to convince my parents that filmmaking is not a delusion, but a viable career that brings me happiness and fulfillment. I continued to pursue my undergraduate academic career in English literature at Duke University while directing films on the side. It was frustrating at first when there were not a lot of collaborators or industry mentors to teach you professional filmmaking, so in my early years, I mostly relied on Youtube videos. My life changed when I participated in a program called Duke in LA, where I can intern in a Hollywood studio and participated in USC’s professional film production as a first assistant director. It was in Los Angeles that I found myself truly at home, being constantly surrounded by passionate artists and like-minded creative individuals. Since then, I made so many more industry connections and I later came back to Los Angeles in 2019, when I began to helm more professional projects as a director and producer and saw my filmmaking abilities grow exponentially. I think the path to any creative career can be mentally taxing and seemingly impossible, especially for artists who were born on foreign soil. The amount of mental and physical stress involved in making just a 12-minute film is tremendous. Therefore, the most important thing for a filmmaker is to be driven by passion and love for stories and storytelling — the fuel that keeps us alive. Without them, filmmaking will just become a job of endless hustling. As storytellers, we need to constantly keep a curious mind and be hungry learners of the world around us — and find the stories that speak to us in their own unique ways.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would take my best friend to the Academy Museum, which as a whole, is a pretty recent addition to LA’s art scene. The museum hosts an exhibition of the history of movie-making as well as a recent special gallery of Pedro Almodovar’s Films, merging traditional aesthetics and state-of-the-art technology. As a film lover, I might also take my friend on a special screening at American Cinematheque, which offers diverse in-person programming of both classic and mainstream films, as well as in-depth discussions with established filmmakers and luminaries. One of the special treats of being in LA is that there are so many screenings, events, and discussions that bring you in close contact with so many established film legends and cinematic icons that one can only dream of in other cities. As for exploring nature and food, I would take anyone to Baldwin Hills, Cabrillo Beach, or Signal Hills, for hiking and walks, followed by a hearty bowl of pho at Garden Grove or barbeque at Korea Town.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I would like to dedicate my Shoutout to my film industry mentors along the way: to John Watson, co-founder of Trilogy Entertainment and my producing mentor on so many of my recent projects including Wei-Lai, Hualing and Watson, and Jack and Lou: A Gangster Love Story. Thank you for trusting and supporting my creative vision in every way possible; to Bruce Green, my editing mentor, for always giving me endless insights and inspirations into stories; to Ellen Eliasoph, founder of Warner Brothers’ office in China and former CEO of Village Roadshow Asia, for teaching me about Chinese, the U.S., and the global film industries and inspire me to achieve high as a creative leader in the industry. I would also like to shout out to my long-time collaborators and friends, who have created an empowering community, in which we can thrive together as creative partners, including but not limited to: Jesse Aultman, Aslan Dalgic, Eris Zhao, Bryce Ferendo, Avo John Kambourian, Kay Zhang, Josh Powell, Ted Beck, Joy Tan. Lastly, I would also like to shout out to my loving parents, who are in China and have supported their son’s bewildering aspirations of becoming a filmmaker in every way they can.

Website: https://www.robinwangfilms.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robin_z_wang/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-zhongyu-wang-6219895a/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robin.wangzhongyu/

Image Credits
Rielle Li, Dimo Zhang, Radia Aadnan, Eris Zhao