The Closing Night selection BAD AXE will screen at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD on Sunday, July 17. BAD AXE won the SXSW Audience Award and received Special Jury Recognition for Exceptional Intimacy in Storytelling in the Documentary Feature Competition. Filmmaker David Siev and special guests will appear for a post screening Q&A and reception. BAD AXE will be preceded by the short film TEN MONTHS directed by Amie Song.

ABOUT BAD AXE

After leaving NYC for his rural hometown of Bad Axe, Michigan, at the start of the pandemic, Asian-American filmmaker David Siev documents 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 family's patriarch, Chun, and his daughter, Jaclyn. When the BLM movement takes center stage in America, the family uses its collective voice to speak out in their conservative community. What unfolds is a real-time portrait of 2020 through the lens of one multicultural family’s fight to stay in business, stay involved, and stay alive.