DIRECTOR AND EDITOR IN SAN FRANCISCO, CA
A VISUAL POET AT THE END OF THE EMPIRE
the POETRY of SURVIVAL
a Directors Statement
Ky shin is a narrative and documentary filmmaker crafting work about people and the places they are tied to by fear and by love. Raised in California’s Central Valley as 5th and 6th generation, Ky grew up surrounded by farmland’s abundance alongside the poverty that sustained it. That tension—between promise and scarcity—continues to shape both their worldview and their films.
Ky’s films focus on tired faces, forgotten places, and the landscapes that bind them. They uncover stories of work, displacement, and resilience—the evicted, the overworked, the silenced. In these human stories, Shin seeks what they call the poetry of survival: the ways people continue to create meaning and hold on to dignity within decline.
Ky learned early that the stories we inherit—and the ones we cling to—can keep us bound to places and ideas we should have outgrown. Their films return to this question again and again:
How do the stories we tell shape the life we want, versus the life we live?