The Center for Asian American Media’s annual film festival, CAAMFest, returns to in-person screening this week for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of CAAMFest, the nation’s largest Asian American-focused film festival. Spanning two weekends and a full week, from May 12-22, CAAMFest will bring dozens of features, shorts, documentaries and special events to theaters in San Francisco and the East Bay. It will also feature many virtual screenings for those who either cannot attend or are not yet comfortable sitting in a crowded theater.

Opening Night will be at the Castro Theatre with the documentary Free Chol Soo Lee, a film about a Korean immigrant wrongfully convicted of a 1973 gangland murder in San Francisco. Closing Night will be held at New Parkway Theater in Oakland with the film Every Day in Kaimukī, about a young man who decides to leave his small town in Hawaii for the mean streets of New York City.

Also on the docket is a special spotlight on the SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District, with a slate of Filipinx films and filmmakers, including a centerpiece screening of Leonor Will Never Die.

Like A Rolling Stone, a documentary focused on the life and work of Ben Fong-Torres, a Bay Area-born journalist and radio personality who served the first music editor of the Rolling Stone magazine—helping to shape the American pop culture landscape.

CAAMFest

Various Locations
May 12-22 | $14+