A film festival is two things at once: the movies on the screen, and the small army of people who spend a year deciding which ones get there. On Friday night, both walked the same red carpet at the AFS Cinema — programmers, jurors, an event lead in a horse-print T-shirt, and filmmakers who had flown in from Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, and Taipei. We talked to as many as we could.
The people who build it
Neha Aziz, the festival’s artistic director, came up through UT’s journalism and film program and a stint at SXSW before a COVID layoff turned into a programming career here. She oversees a lineup of 34 films from 20 countries — Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Estonia, the Philippines, and the diaspora communities in between. What she keeps coming back to isn’t the slate but the room: “the conversations that take place in the lobby after a film are really magical.”
Neha Aziz, Artistic Director.
Under her are the programmers who actually do the watching. Joshua Martin has been on the feature team for ten years, sifting 50 to 60 feature submissions and hundreds of shorts each cycle; on Friday he was about to introduce 100 Sunset, a Tibetan-Canadian surveillance thriller. Tony Nguyen, who drives in from Dallas every year, figures he watched “more than 100 features” for this edition. Britney Salyer keeps the machine running as program and box-office coordinator — a circuit veteran who also works SXSW, Telluride, and SXSW Americas — and Alishba Javaid, who started as a UT student volunteer in 2022, now programs the shorts and hosts their Q&As.
“All of the films are great, which brings people together. And it brings cool people together.”
Holding the social calendar together is Catherine Vo, the event lead, who admitted she wouldn’t see a single movie all weekend — too busy making sure the snack breaks, the Taiwan VR activation, and the Centerpiece Corral party all ran on time. “I have no agenda,” she laughed, “other than making sure everyone’s having a good time.”
The jury
Austin King — yes, named after the city by Austin-loving parents — sits on the narrative jury when he isn’t running submissions at Fantastic Fest. He called the opening-night film Honeyjoon “very funny… and certainly sad at times, but also really hopeful,” and was refreshingly blunt about where he stands on the year’s loudest debate: “I want to see things made by people.” His dream project? An epic trilogy of Arthurian legend. Fellow juror Yuta Yamaguchi, a returning AAAFF director, found himself on the other side of the table this year.
Austin King, narrative juror (and Fantastic Fest programmer).
The filmmakers
The filmmakers are why everyone else does the work. Myles Matsuno and producer Lailanie Gadia brought the Texas premiere of Light on a Hill, about a Korean immigrant family whose Altadena burger joint, Fair Oaks Burger, turned its parking lot into a meal-distribution hub for neighbors after the LA fires. Lisette Marie Flanary flew in on a Honolulu redeye with Māhū: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter, a short documentary about her kumu hula and three Native Hawaiian transgender artists reclaiming the word māhū as a source of pride.
From Texas by way of New York, Sophia Lim presented Taemong — Korean for a baby-conception dream — with her sister Grace Lim, who shot its 8mm footage. From Taipei, director Chou Tung-Yen and his editor brought the Taiwan Academy’s VR film In the Mist, marveling at how young the whole festival felt: “the volunteers, the filmmakers, all the staff — so young. You can really feel the vibes.”
The most candid conversation of the night belonged to Mahnoor Euceph, whose proof-of-concept short 11:11 — a brown teenage girl whose 11:11 wish accidentally turns her white — came backed by an accelerator from Cate Blanchett, Coco Francini, and Dr. Stacy L. Smith. The USC grad, whose earlier short Eid Mubarak was Academy Award long-listed, has a fifty-year plan and a dream biopic of Benazir Bhutto. Asked what it would take to lure her from California to Austin, she didn’t blink: “Enough to make my film. I just need a few million.”
Mahnoor Euceph, writer-director of “11:11.”
The centerpiece
All of it led to Traces of Home, Colette Ghunim’s documentary about her father, who fled Palestine, and her mother, who left a difficult home in Mexico — two refugees whose daughter turns inheritance into an act of repair. Gunwant Kaur, a poet and healer attending with Ghunim’s family, put it best on the carpet: the film, she said, “becomes an act of healing, and a project of collective healing.” A fitting note for a festival that, more than anything, is about people sitting in a dark room together and recognizing a piece of themselves on screen.
Find the festival & filmmakers
The festival. aaafilmfest.org
Programming & staff. Neha Aziz, Artistic Director — @nehaaziz, linktr.ee/nehaaziz • Joshua Martin, Special Programs & Film Programmer — AAAFF staff • Tony Nguyen, Features Programmer — tonynguyen.world, Spacy microcinema • Britney Salyer, Box Office Coordinator — LinkedIn • Alishba Javaid, Shorts Programmer — Substack, @alishbakikahani • Catherine Vo, Event Lead — @catvoyoga
The jury. Austin King — Fantastic Fest, @ahouseingotham • Yuta Yamaguchi — yutayamaguchi.com, Vimeo
Filmmakers & films. Light on a Hill (Myles Matsuno & Lailanie Gadia) — matsunomedia.com, @myles_matsuno • Māhū (Lisette Marie Flanary) — lehuafilms.com • In the Mist (Chou Tung-Yen) — vmstudio.tw • 11:11 (Mahnoor Euceph) — nooreuceph.com • Barrio Chino Havana (Jalena Keane-Lee) — jalenakeanelee.com • Gunwant Kaur (on Traces of Home) — goddessgunwant.com • Taemong (Sophia Lim, with Grace Lim)
All 29 red-carpet interviews and b-roll clips are on our red-carpet page, with the full festival guide at our AAAFF 2026 schedule and everything we’ve published in the coverage index. Interviews by Asia Film Fests and Austin Hangout; names transcribed from our recordings — corrections welcome.
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