Yú Cì (Fish Bones)
2025 · 11m · United States
Directed by Kevin Xian Ming Yu
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Bowen, a nonbinary Chinese-American from Queens, unexpectedly encounters their estranged father late one night and attempts to reconnect while tending to a poisonous fish bite.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the estranged-father reconciliation to feel like therapy—instead Yu lets the poisoned fish bite sit there, literal and weird, refusing to resolve either wound. It's a small subversion that lands because it refuses sentiment.
The film positions itself in the lineage of intimate family portraiture but with formal restraint that recalls contemporary Asian-American cinema's best work—each compositional choice feels earned, each silence a decision rather than a gap.
The masterstroke is anchoring the entire emotional arc to a physical detail: that fish bite becomes the film's grammar, letting Bowen's vulnerability leak out through tending it rather than talking about it, and it's that one tactile choice that makes the whole 11 minutes breathe.