For the next film in our Art House 101: Global Queer Cinema series, we’re looking through the eyes of a filmmaker who brought her own cultural experience to a story about family, identity, and falling in love: Alice Wu’s Saving Face.

Wil is a successful young surgeon living in New York’s tight-knit Chinese-American community, where her single life is already a source of concern for her traditional mother. But when her mother unexpectedly becomes pregnant and is sent to live with Wil, the pressure to maintain the family’s reputation only intensifies. Then Wil meets Vivian, a beautiful and openly queer ballet dancer, and finds herself falling in love, forcing her to choose between the expectations placed upon her and the life she actually wants.

Drawing from her own experiences as a queer Chinese-American woman, Alice Wu’s Saving Face is a deeply personal romantic comedy about the complicated ways sexuality shape who we allow ourselves to become. With its charming performances and refusal to choose between cultural tradition and queer identity, Wu created a film that understands that sometimes the hardest person to come out to is yourself.