Michael Yu at the 48th Asian American International Film Festival (Junaid Arif, Asian CineVision)
Tong Lai in Out of Gas (2019)
Fernando Sebastian Monjaraz in En Garde (2024)
Alfred Yu and Jonathan Cheung in Taichi-ing (TBR)
Writer-Director Michael Yu Aims to Continue Building a Wide Body of Work
by / ⠀Featured / September 2, 2025
Filmmakers set out to tell all kinds of different stories. Some explore friendship. Others go for workplace relationships. A few look at grandparents. Writer, director, and producer Michael Yu, however, is going for it all.
Yu grew up in Hong Kong with a camera in one hand and a soccer ball in the other. With a British, American, and Chinese family, he speaks multiple languages and spends summers visiting family from Chicago to Glasgow. Given his background, it’s no wonder that he strives for diversity in his work.
“I want them to feel multifaceted and deep,” Yu shared, in discussing the characters he writes. “I’ve had great relationships… I’ve had terrible ones, I’ve had amazing friends, I’ve had terrible ones… I’d like my work to tackle the complexity of that rather than reducing us to nubs.”
He began grappling with this in one of his first drama short films, Out of Gas (2019). Set in Hong Kong, the piece was a two-hander following a bored banker and a truck driver going about their days at work. “One was white and made a lot of money, the other was Asian and doing a labor-intensive job. To the outside world, they couldn’t be more different,” Yu said, noting that, as the story builds, the camera begins to frame the two subjects in increasingly similar ways.
When the two men finally meet each other at the film’s climax, they magically switch places. A montage with a hopeful score washes over us as the once-banker operates a truck and the once-driver slots into an office cubicle. “I wanted to show that people shouldn’t be defined by these outside things—they are who they are on the inside. We’re all human at the end of the day.” Out of Gas (2019) was screened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Finding a connection between two seemingly different individuals became the centre of one of Yu’s latest pieces, En Garde (2024), as well. This time: a fantasy action drama that opens with an eager young man convincing his uptight roommate to play video games together.
Whereas Out of Gas focused on social class, En Garde used another theme to tie its male characters together. “Play is a really strong way of connecting people. It evokes something deeper, almost more pure, because that’s how we learned growing up—by playing.”
After being rejected by his roommate, the En Garde’s protagonist is magically transported to a fantasy realm by the touch of a sword. Once his roommate is brought into the realm with him, they fight with blades, smiles beaming, into the credits—ending on a tender note of friendship. Created as part of the 48 Hour Film Project in the San Francisco Bay Area, En Garde won multiple awards and later screened at Filmapalooza 2025 in Seattle.
Out of Gas, which Yu wrote, was inspired by the lives of his family and friends who were bankers and delivery drivers. En Garde, meanwhile, was penned by a team of writers to meet its strict production timeline. While both films are treasured pieces for Yu, his priorities have since shifted. “I think what’s important to me now is making [my work] actually come from my lived experiences.”
With his latest drama Taichi-ing (TBR), Yu returns to Hong Kong. Taking place during the pandemic, he explores the tension between a young American man and his traditional Chinese grandfather as they isolate together. “He’s really fun and down-to-earth. And he cares so deeply about Chinese culture,” Yu said about his grandfather, Alfred Yu, who plays a version of himself on screen.
Like En Garde, Taichi-ing also involves a blade. After failing to connect with his grandson, the grandfather is finally able to squeeze out a giggle between the two by waving around his beloved taichi sword. “I think the note that Taichi-ing ends on is a hopeful one. That maybe Chinese men out there can watch this and be like, ah… yeah. I hope, too, that my heritage will stay.” Soon to enter post-production, Yu aims to have Taichi-ing on the festival circuit next year.
Having written and directed over ten short films, Yu has set his eyes on bigger projects. Last year, he embarked on writing his first feature-length screenplay, Mr. Cool. This coming-of-age dramedy follows Vinny, a directionless Hong Konger navigating the strange worlds of a Californian liberal arts college.
The longer format and authentic core of the story gave Yu a newfound creative freedom. “Vinny was more fleshed out [as a character] because he came from a feature, but also because he’s me. There’s very little difference between who I was in college and Vinny at certain stages.” Yu is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College and had a stint at the University of California, Berkeley.
Even still, Yu acknowledged that no single feature film can tackle the complexity he hopes to in his work. “Maybe that’s just the form of film. You’ve only got two hours or so to tell a story. And someone has to go through growth… you have to set them up really strongly. You have to put tons of obstacles in their way for them to overcome and thus change.”
He stressed, then, the importance of building a body of work. With writing and directing credits across thriller, drama, action, and comedy, Yu looks to maintain his multi-disciplinary approach going forward. “Through the body of work that I create, I’d like to show many different sides of myself… and hopefully others will relate to that.”
Despite the recent turmoil in the industry, Yu is staying firm—filmmaking is everything for him. “It’s hard for me to understand what I’m going through, and hopefully the work will continue to allow me to understand myself better, and hopefully help other people look at themselves… because great fiction will allow you to see how other people see the world, and maybe show you something about yourself. That’s really powerful for me.”
Michael Yu will be developing a handful of feature-length projects across the thriller and comedy spaces. Earlier this year, Yu directed a series of music videos for singer-songwriter archie, and served as a Juror at the 48th Asian American International Film Festival.
About The Author
