Julian Kim and Peter S. Lee wrote and directed Happy Cleaners, a true independent film, funded via Kickstarter with the support of KoreanAmericanStory that tackles the subject of growing up in an immigrant household. Happy Cleaners, starring Charles Ryu, Hyanghwa Lim, Yeena Sung, and Yun Jeong, will have its World Premiere at the 2019 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and is also screening at the 2019 CAAMFest in San Francisco.
Immigrant families and first-generation kids battle over cultural traditions while undergoing assimilation to an adopted homeland. Happy Cleaners dissects this fraught experience through the lens of a contemporary Korean American family and their struggles to save their dry cleaning business in the diverse neighborhood of Flushing, Queens NY.
Young millennials Kevin (Yun Jeong) and his sister Hyunny (Yeena Sung) live with their parents in NYC’s quintessential melting pot. The family owns a dry-cleaning business with an uncertain future after the property is sold to a new landlord. As their parents face a financially unstable future, Kevin and Hyunny must navigate their respective adulting towards futures their parents did not foresee for them. With a LA move in the works for Kevin and a stalled six-year relationship for Hyunny, the Choi family looks to each other for love, support, and a way out.
