YU GU is a filmmaker and visual artist born in Chongqing, China and raised in Vancouver, Canada. She explores the clash between individual identity and social forces with a lyrical and visceral approach. Yu’s hybrid documentary A MOTH IN SPRING, which follows her family’s fight for freedom of expression in China, premiered at Hot Docs International Film Festival and was broadcast on HBO.

She co-directed the feature documentary, WHO IS ARTHUR CHU?, chronicling the redemption of an Asian American Jeopardy! champion turned internet iconoclast. The award-winning film premiered at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival, broadcast on Emmy Award-winning series America Reframed on PBS and released across all digital platforms. Her second film continues to explore the intimate journeys of people rising from the margins to transform the mainstream.

A WOMAN’S WORK world-premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and won Best Emerging Filmmaker Award at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film festival. Yu is currently directing INTERIOR MIGRATIONS, a multi-platform project documenting the memories of migrant workers in Canada. The first 3-channel short documentary from this series premiered at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s “Every.Now.Then: Reframing Nationhood” exhibit.

She is an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab, the Firelight Media Producer’s Fellowship, the TFI/CNN/Points North Institute Story Lab, and the Sundance Institute Rockefeller Foundation documentary partnership. Yu received her MFA in film production from the University of Southern California and a BA from the University of British Columbia.

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Film

A Woman's Work

Program Affiliation

Documentary Lab

Cohort Year

2016-2017

Website

http://bit.ly/awwdocu