Premiering at last year’s Tribeca Festival where it picked up Best Screenplay and Best Performance, Shelly Yo’s directorial debut Smoking Tigers is a nuanced coming-of-age tale starring Ji-young Yoo (Expats, Freaky Tales). Now set for a theatrical release beginning in Los Angeles on August 16, followed by a Max streaming debut on August 23, we’re pleased to exclusively debut the first trailer.
Here’s the synopsis (stylized in all lower case): “set in los angeles in the early 2000s, smoking tigers is a portrait of a lonely korean – american teen named hayoung who is taken under the wings of three wealthy students she meets at an elite academic bootcamp. as she falls deeper into their world, hayoung works harder to hide her insecurities about her problematic family and lower – income background, only to discover the bittersweet pains of adulthood that will forever shape her life.”
Smoking Tigers is an intimate portrait of a Korean-American teenager named Hayoung who carries the heavy weight of the American dream as she navigates her way into new friendships and relationships,” the director tells us. “Through her journey, we witness how these idealized reflections of family and success can poison us and pressure us to change into a false version of ourselves. For this film, it was vital to highlight the female perspective and to lean into the gentle, surreal fragments of reality to reflect the strength of vulnerability. Through Smoking Tigers, we wanted to show the beauty in brokenness and to provide warmth to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider.”
See the exclusive trailer below.
