Mushroom Dad
2025 · 14m · USA
Directed by Michael Yuchen Lei
Genres: comedy, drama, surrealism
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, tender
On the opening night of his ambitious new restaurant, a young chef must care for his estranged Chinese-immigrant father after his dad accidentally consumes psychedelic mushrooms meant for an experimental tasting course.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the mushroom trip to be the joke—Lei instead uses it as the honest thing, the surreal permission structure where a guy finally tells his dad he matters, which is genuinely perverse in the best way.
The film's restraint in its surrealism—how it doesn't lean into the visual excess you'd expect from the premise—situates it in a lineage of intimate family dramas that use formalist constraint to deepen emotional stakes rather than undercut them.
Lei's decision to keep the father's experience of the trip mostly non-verbal, letting the son's bewilderment and care do the emotional heavy lifting, transforms a high-concept setup into something that feels earned on a micro-budget.
Reviews
An inventive, heartfelt short that blends surreal comedy with raw emotional truth.
An unexpectedly touching character study — the dialogue and the acting is completely natural.
Festivals
- Tribeca Film Festival 2025
- HollyShorts Film Festival 2025, AAPI Award