Ameya

A film about what it means to grow up as a young South Asian girl in Japan — navigating family, love, and yearning.

What is the cost of hustling in a large city? How do you get a job in this economy? How often should you get an STD test? Are your friends just there because of proximity or because you are actually friends? What is the cost of love and friendship in a city like Tokyo? This film was written with those questions in mind.

Elin McCready and Midori Morita have been married for 20 years, and live in Tokyo with their 3 kids. In 2018 Elin filed to change her gender in the US, and shortly thereafter proceeded to change her gender and marriage documents in Japan as well. However, Japan has refused to recognize her transition as it would result in the de facto acceptance of same-sex marriage. To put it simply, Elin broke the Japanese legal system- a system that does not allow transgender people to have children, a system that does not allow same-sex marriage, and a system that does not recognize queer people as people with the same lives as those who identify as heterosexual.