YELLOW ROSE

Grand Jury Award, North American Narrative Feature, 2019 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
Best Narrative Feature, 2019 Urbanworld Film Festival

Windblown Rose Garcia (two-time Tony Award nominee Eva Noblezada) is a seventeen-year-old, undocumented Filipino American living in a dusty motel with her widowed mother in a small Texas city. As a young DREAMer in the Lone Star state, Rose is in love with country music–writing songs, singing alone in her room, dreaming of a world she’s never seen. When Rose secretly takes a road trip to an Austin concert, an ICE raid at home forces her mother into a detention facility, leaving Rose suddenly alone and homeless. Constantly on the run, Rose experiences a deep, unrequited love with a home that also seeks to deny her existence and separate her family. As she bounces from ally to ally–including her estranged Tita Gail (Tony Award winner Lea Salonga)–Rose begins to discover where she truly belongs. “Square Peg, round hole,” she sings. “I’ll run away, with nowhere to go.”

Inspired by her own Texas roots, filmmaker Diana Paragas crafts a country musical story of a young woman’s search for belonging amidst a backdrop of harrowing fear felt by American families under the current government’s immigration policies. In her film debut, Eva Noblezada gracefully navigates Rose’s irrepressible desire to express herself through music. With cowboy hat, a bold red lip, and the thrilling voice of angels, no matter her circumstance, Rose ain’t going down quietly into the night. She may be a square peg, but she fits wherever she wants.

–James Paguyo

Official Gala Screening of the San Diego Asian Film Festival. For tickets to the gala, please visit this link for more information.

Underwritten by PASACAT & ARIS ELIJAH PUGAL FOUNDATION