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You can’t get much more personal than David Siev’s documentary, Bad ax, named after the small town in Michigan where his family lived and operated the popular local restaurant Rachel’s. Things took a drastic turn in 2020 when COVID-19 hit the country and then-President Donald Trump used his platform to target China, which in turn started anti-Asian hatred to rise across the nation. Michigan is a swing state, but Bad Axe, Michigan is very much Trump country.
Even before that, David’s family—led by father Chun, who managed to escape the killing fields of Cambodia, and his Mexican mother—struggled when COVID made it difficult to sustain Rachel’s business. Things got even worse when they started experiencing pushback from Siev’s once-friendly neighbors, many of whom didn’t want to follow COVID protocols, such as wearing a mask in their restaurant.
Bad ax is an incredibly powerful and moving cinema verité film that creates a surprisingly effective cross-section of the events of 2020, albeit seen through the eyes of Siev’s Asian-Mexican-American family. It’s a very relatable story that is especially instructive for those of us who live in the more liberal areas of the country.
CinemaDailyUS’ Edward Douglas spoke with Siev recently, a video interview you can watch above.
Bad ax will open in select theaters on Friday, November 18, following its recent New York premiere in DOC-NYC.
Movie Synopsis:
After leaving New York for his rural hometown of Bad Axe, Michigan, at the start of the pandemic, Asian-American filmmaker David Siew documented his family’s struggles to keep their restaurant afloat. As fears of the virus grow, deep generational scars dating back to Cambodia’s bloody “killing fields” come to the fore, straining the relationship between the Chun family patriarch and his daughter Jacqueline. As the BLM movement takes center stage in America, the family uses their collective voice to speak to their conservative community. What unfolds is a real-time portrait of 2020 through the lens of a multicultural family’s struggle to stay in business, stay engaged and stay alive.
See more articles by Edward Douglas.
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