Mira Mesa Native’s ‘Docu-Narrative’ to Be Featured at 25th San Diego Asian Film Festival

Growing up in Mira Mesa, Ivan Leung spent countless hours watching movies at the Regal Edwards Mira Mesa theater in town.

On Sunday, Leung will once again be in the theater watching a movie, but this time, it will be a film that he directed, wrote and stars in.

The film is “Extremely Unique Dynamic” and is one of the highlights of the San Diego Asian Film Festival that kicks off Thursday.

“It’s the theater that I grew up with, so it is insanely special for me, and I really can’t wait to celebrate with everyone at a theater that I’m so familiar with,” said Leung.

The film’s premiere marks an unlikely journey for a self-described “super-shy kid” who attended Mira Mesa High School and San Diego State University and is now returning to his hometown as a rising filmmaker.

“I’m going to be inviting every single person that I know, remotely know, and everyone that I grew up with, for sure,” said Leung.

The movie focuses on two best friends, Ryan and Daniel, who bond over making videos together. But when Ryan prepares to move to Canada, the duo decides to take one last weekend to make their greatest movie yet.

“It’s a queer, Asian, meta, stoner, coming of age, romantic comedy about two Asian guys making a movie about two Asian guys making a movie about two Asian guys,” said Leung.

The film was made with his filmmaking partner Harrison Xu and borrows heavily from Leung’s real-life experiences.

“Harrison was actually moving to Canada as well, so we wanted to do some kind of like time capsule of our friendship, because we’ve been friends for 10 years,” said Leung. “So, the movie really represents a lot of real life things that we had to go through.”

Leung calls it a docu-narrative, adding that there’s “documentary stuff of real-life things that we actually go through.” But, he added, “I think it’s up to the audience interpretation of what’s real and what’s not.”

“Extremely Unique Dynamic” is one of more than 130 films from 30 countries that will be screened at the festival. Celebrating its 25^th year, the festival is scheduled to run Nov. 7-15. More information and tickets are available at www.sdaff.org.

Now living in Los Angeles, Leung has a horror movie coming out next and acted in another horror movie that he said will be coming out soon. He hopes his journey will inspire others.

“The thing that I want people to get most out of it is, when you make a film, it’s very, very daunting, and we forget that filmmaking is supposed to be fun,” he said. “And sometimes, we forget that when we were kids, we just picked up a camera and we just started shooting and we put it all together, and we showed our friends and family, and that’s kind of like the magic of filmmaking.

“So that’s what I really, really want people to take from it. Just go out and do it and just have fun.”