One of the inspirations for writing FOR IZZY was to find a way to work with veteran actors Elizabeth Sung and Jim Lau again – both of whom were in my previous feature YES, AND… (and Jim being in most of my prior short films).
And through the development process of the story, I realized that I rarely see any Asian or Asian-American single parents being portrayed in film or television.
Most of the time, the “Asian parents” (or any Asian character over 50) tend to play the role of comic relief in a story – the kooky Asian parents, the well meaning but ill informed Asian parents, the Asian parents dealing with clashes of culture and generations with their kids and their adopted country. And, they are all part of a nuclear family where both mother and father are still together.
Which is all great (most of the time…). It’s usually coming from a place of love. We love them so much that we can poke a bit of fun at them and by extension, ourselves.
But the characters of Anna Cheung and Peter Yip are an exception – it’s a straight up drama, about single parents having to raise children who are/were a handful, and yet yearning to have a sense of self beyond their role as caregivers. And a rich backstory of who they were when they were younger before they had kids. It’s about two people who never intended to be single parents, but who struggle to this day about what that means to them as adults who also want to fall back in love should the right person come along.