6 Movies from the Asian Film Canon That Will Make You Want to Travel

This story about Asian and Asian American films is part of Home, Made, a collection of stories honoring Asian diasporas creating vibrant communities by weaving their heritages with their American hometowns. Read more here.

As Nicole Kidman famously says in that viral ad for AMC Theatres, the movies let us “go somewhere we’ve never been before.” But some very special films activate in us the deep-seated desire to actually visit those places and see them with our own eyes, so we can experience everything we see onscreen for ourselves—or, at least, something close to it.

To celebrate the transportive power of cinema and the stories they tell, I’m sharing excerpts from my book The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America, which honors the past, present, and future of Asian and Asian American films, as well as movie-making in the hands of Asian creativity, to highlight six films that’ll make you want to book a ticket directly to the beautiful, awe-inspiring, and atmospheric backdrops of some of the most iconic stories in the Asian and Asian American film canon. From the back alleys of neon-bright Hong Kong and the luxe corridors of the Lion City that is Singapore, to the lush prairies of the American heartland to the let-it-all-hang-out parties of New York’s queer summer camp, Fire Island, these landscapes offer just as much narrative and drama as the memorable characters of these now-classic films.

I hope these movies—and The Golden Screen—remind you of the expansive nature of the Asian diaspora and how, wherever we go, we can carve out spaces to tell our own stories, our own way. —Jeff Yang