Slanted

What it’s about

Joan Huang, the daughter of Chinese migrants, has always wanted to be white and become prom queen. As a high schooler, she tries to shed her ethnicity and imitate a popular classmate, eventually undergoing an experimental procedure to start over as a blue-eyed blonde.

What hooks you

Director Amy Wang wrote the script and casts Shirley Chen as Joan Huang and Mckenna Grace as Jo Hunt. The film mixes drama, horror, comedy, and science fiction, with a woman director's perspective on identity and assimilation.

Who it’s for

It is worth a look for anyone who likes satire that turns high school anxieties into something monstrous, stories about the pressure to conform, or genre blends that make social commentary feel visceral.