Rising Stars: Meet Xinran (Wendy) Tong of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Xinran (Wendy) Tong.

Hi Xinran (Wendy), thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a documentary filmmaker and cross-media artist, currently pursuing my MFA in Documentary at UCLA. I was born and raised in mainland China, where family life was often defined by silence, responsibility, and control. Growing up in that environment made me sensitive to the unspoken ways intimacy and power are negotiated within East Asian households. When I later came to the U.S. to study film, the physical and cultural distance sharpened my perspective and gave me a new lens to look back at my own upbringing. It was here that I began using filmmaking not just to document reality, but to question and reframe it.

My work often begins with the intimate and personal, then expands outward to address larger cultural questions. Touch Me, Please! is a short fiction film that explores the struggles of disabled individuals navigating the tension between social stigma and personal desire. With Still Here, Still There, I turned the camera toward my own family, telling the story of my aunt’s pursuit of the “American Dream” and the emotional dissonance that emerged between generations. These works reflect my ongoing interest in the fragile interplay between intimacy, control, and selfhood.

At the same time, I’ve been drawn to pushing the formal boundaries of documentary. Beyond vérité footage, I experiment with video installations, interactive media, and AI-generated imagery to reimagine how stories can be told and experienced. My current hybrid film, Image Exile, is a docufiction that follows a collector of vintage footage. It examines how low-resolution images, fragile and imperfect, carry emotional and cultural memory, and how image-restoration technologies, while improving clarity, risk erasing that texture. This work continues my exploration of the link between memory, technology, and identity.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been an easy road. Making documentaries often means building a story out of someone else’s real life, which requires a lot of sensitivity and responsibility. I am constantly aware that I’m working with real people, not characters, so I need to be mindful of their vulnerabilities and of the delicate relationships within their families.

One of my biggest challenges is making sure my films do not intensify existing conflicts but instead create space for reflection and even healing. For example, in Still Here, Still There, I told the story of my aunt’s immigration journey and the generational frictions that came with it. Filming her story meant navigating not just her emotions, but also her relationships with the rest of the family. I had to carefully balance honesty with care, making sure that the process respected her while still engaging with the larger cultural questions at the heart of the film.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My practice spans nonfiction, hybrid, and experimental storytelling, often centering on intimacy, family, and cultural identity. I specialize in blending traditional documentary with emerging media and editing-driven approaches, exploring how sound, image, and form shape the way we experience memory and emotion.

My short fiction film Touch Me, Please! navigates sex and desire from the perspective of disabled individuals, confronting both stigma and intimacy. My documentary Still Here, Still There explores my aunt Zhu Fang’s pursuit of the “American Dream,” and the emotional tensions it produced within our family across generations. It is both a family portrait and a reflection on the burdens often carried by women in East Asian culture.

As an editor, I have also worked on short films such as The Ringing, which explores a mother-son relationship within the context of second-generation immigration. Through sound and editing, the film evokes childhood memories of anxiety, using the recurring image of a trembling glass cup drawn from my own experience growing up in an earthquake zone.

Most recently, I am developing my hybrid film Image Exile, a docufiction that examines the cultural value of low-resolution imagery and questions how AI-driven restoration can simultaneously preserve and erase memory. This project continues my interest in bridging the personal with the technological, and in pushing documentary toward new forms.

What I am most proud of is that my work opens difficult but necessary conversations—around intimacy, stigma, family, and identity—while also experimenting formally with how stories are told. What sets me apart is my ability to move between intimate family narratives and more experimental, cross-media approaches, combining emotional closeness with formal innovation.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
One of my favorite memories goes back to high school, when I was attending a boarding school. Every week, my parents and our dog, Laifu, would come to the school gate to pick me up. Among the crowd of students in identical uniforms, Laifu could always recognize me immediately and would run straight toward me, jumping into my arms. That simple ritual of being welcomed home gave me one of the purest joys of my teenage years.

Laifu passed away while I was studying in New York, and it was an incredibly difficult moment for me. To cope with the loss, I began looking through our old home videos and eventually made my first short documentary as a way to remember her. That experience showed me how powerful honest, ordinary stories can be, and it was really the beginning of my journey as a documentary filmmaker.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: txrwendy