44th CAAMFest: Asian & Pacific Cinema

Film festivals can sound like calendar filler. This one isn’t. CAAMFest 2026 is the Center for Asian American Media’s 44th annual festival, and this year it lands at a moment when Asian American independent film is trying to rebuild momentum after a bruising 2025. The event opened on Thursday, May 7, in San Francisco Japantown with Eugene Yi’s documentary “The A List: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas,” and the whole thing runs in person through Sunday, May 10. ### What is CAAMFest, exactly? Basically, it’s a film festival with a wider brief. CAAMFest mixes narrative features, documentaries, shorts, industry talks, and social events, all built around Asian American and Pacific diaspora storytelling. This year’s center of gravity is AMC Kabuki in Japantown, with some events spilling into places like the Asian Art Museum, New People Cinema, KOHO Creative Hub, and Koret Auditorium. (caamedia.org) ### What changed this year? The scale and tone feel sharper. CAAM says the 2026 festival includes more than 60 films, five world premieres, and an expanded emphasis on documentaries that CAAM helped fund or produce. That matters because it turns the festival from a simple showcase into something closer to a pipeline — a place that not only screens work, but helps get the work made in the first place. (caamedia.org) ### What opened the festival? Opening night centered on “The A List: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas,” a documentary directed by Eugene Yi that asks what it means to be AAPI. After the screening, CAAM held its opening gala at the Asian Art Museum. So the first-night message was pretty clear — this festival wants film, conversation, and community to feel like one connected thing, not separate lanes. ### What’s on the schedule now? (caamedia.org) Saturday, May 9 is stacked. The lineup includes “About Face: Disrupting Ballet,” “Food Delivery: Fresh From the West Philippine Sea,” “Honeyjoon,” “Another World,” “Hoop Like This,” “The Dao of Thao,” “Breaking the Code,” “Mouse,” “Seat at the Table,” “Jersey Boy,” “Mabuhay,” and the shorts program “Thirteen O’Clock.” There’s also the Tea House Salon in the morning — one of the festival’s industry-facing gatherings. (caamfest.com) ### Which titles seem most central? A few films are doing the heavy lifting in the program. “Forge,” directed by Jing Ai Ng, is the narrative centerpiece. “The Gas Station Attendant,” directed by Karla Murthy, is the centerpiece documentary and one of the CAAM-funded titles. “Before the Moon Falls,” from Kimberlee Bassford and made in partnership with Pacific Islanders in Communications, is a documentary spotlight. Closing night belongs to Colette Ghunim’s “Traces of Home.” (caamfest.com) ### Why all the panels and salons? Because the festival is also trying to answer an industry problem. CAAM’s own framing for 2026 is that last year brought “historic challenges” for the work it supports, while this year is about rebuilding the foundation for independent storytellers. Programs like “From the Margins to the Blueprint,” “Bad Asians, Good Trouble,” and the Tea House Salon are less about red carpets and more about how artists survive gatekeeping, funding pressure, and a changing media business. (caamfest.com) ### Why does Japantown matter here? Location is part of the point. CAAM is explicitly centering the festival in San Francisco Japantown and tying it to the neighborhood’s history as a hub for Asian American community building. A festival can feel abstract if it’s just a slate of screenings. Put it in Japantown, around the Kabuki and partner venues, and it starts to feel like civic space — culture happening in public, with roots. (caamfest.com) ### So what’s the bottom line? CAAMFest 2026 is not just a movie weekend. It’s a four-day argument that Asian American and Pacific stories need institutions, rooms, audiences, and money around them — and that San Francisco is still one of the places trying to provide all four. (caamedia.org)