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Rosemead Opens in Theaters, Sparking Urgent Conversations About Asian American Mental Health
- Dylan Chen
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Lucy Liu's gripping new film Rosemead opened in New York City on December 5 and expands to Los Angeles this weekend on December 12, arriving at a critical moment when Asian American mental health struggles remain deeply stigmatized and undertreated. The drama, which earned $50,243 in its opening weekend at NYC's AMC Lincoln Square—one of the year's top per-theater debuts—has already sparked vital conversations about mental illness, intergenerational trauma, and the invisible barriers facing immigrant communities.
A True Story of Desperation and Isolation
Inspired by journalist Frank Shyong's 2017 Los Angeles Times article about the Hang family tragedy, Rosemead stars Liu in a transformative performance as Irene, a terminally ill Chinese immigrant widow confronting an impossible situation: her teenage son Joe (Lawrence Shou) suffers from schizophrenia and shows increasingly troubling obsessions with mass violence. Set against the backdrop of Southern California's San Gabriel Valley—where over 60% of residents identify as Asian—the film captures the suffocating silence surrounding mental health in communities where "saving face" often takes precedence over seeking help.
The real story behind the film is harrowing. Lai Hang, a Laotian mother dying of cancer, killed her 17-year-old son George in a Rosemead motel room in 2015 because she feared what would happen after her death. She believed he was dangerous and that she was protecting others. Hang's friend Ping Chong later revealed that despite their closeness, they "lacked the emotional vocabulary" to discuss the tragedy directly—a silence rooted in cultural beliefs that "to speak of Hang's burden would only make it heavier".
Unveiling the Mental Health Crisis in Asian American Communities Through Rosemead
Rosemead arrives as Asian Americans face significant mental health disparities that remain largely invisible. While 18% of the general U.S. population seeks mental health services, only 8.6% of Asian Americans do so. Research shows Asian Americans are 50% less likely than other racial groups to access mental health care, even as 33% of Korean American adults and 16% of Chinese Americans experience symptoms of depression.
The film powerfully illustrates why these gaps exist. At a community party, other Asian American families gossip behind Irene's back about Joe seeing a psychiatrist, prompting her to claim he's there out of interest in psychology, not because he needs therapy. In a particularly poignant scene, Irene tells her son's therapist, "You have a Chinese face, but you don't understand us"—underscoring the critical need for culturally attuned, in-language mental health services.
Breaking the Silence: Cultural Barriers and Structural Failures
Multiple layers of barriers prevent Asian Americans from accessing care. Cultural stigma remains pervasive: in many Asian communities, mental illness is viewed as individual weakness, a poor reflection on the family, or even attributed to bad karma or divine punishment. The model minority myth—which stereotypes Asian Americans as uniformly successful and resilient—compounds these challenges by making it even more shameful to admit struggles.
Structural obstacles create additional hurdles. Language barriers leave immigrants waiting months to find providers who speak their language and share their cultural background. Many immigrants, lacking proper advocacy during medical appointments, feel invisible and unheard in healthcare systems. As Liu explained about her character's broken English: "Marginalized people and people who are immigrants come here, and they lack the advocacy they need in medical appointments, or even through the school or through therapy, to have a real understanding of what is being translated to them".
Intergenerational Trauma: The Weight of Silence
The film explores how trauma passes through generations in Asian American families through silence and avoidance. As panelists at an Apex for Youth screening discussed, immigrant parents often cope with their own trauma through compartmentalization and emotional avoidance—a "breeding ground for shame, perfectionism, anxiety, and a focus on external success at the expense of emotional integration".
Yaya Yuan, Apex for Youth's Director of Programs, noted how the film captures the "masking of pain" common among Asian American youth: "The moments where he masks the struggle… and you see him kind of settle into this. 'No. I'm fine.'… And then the moment where he runs out of the classroom and he's having a breakdown in a kind of crisis, and he also just composes himself and moves on to the day".
Liu herself connected the film to her own upbringing, reflecting on "the difficulty of discussing emotions or even recognizing our feelings" during her childhood. The actress emphasized that while Rosemead focuses on the mental health of the Asian American community, its themes of love, family, and cultural stigma resonate universally.
A Call for Community Healing and Systemic Change
The conversations sparked by Rosemead point toward necessary solutions. Apex for Youth, which started mental health services in 2021 following COVID-19 isolation and spikes in anti-Asian violence, prioritizes therapists who share the cultural backgrounds and experiences of their youth and families—ensuring they speak "not just the same words, but the same emotional language".
The film's panel discussions emphasized that healing requires "courageous, intergenerational conversations" that acknowledge trauma, open doors through community support, and help immigrant families learn to receive help—often harder than giving for those taught self-sacrifice. As Jennifer Wu, a lawyer advocating for Asian American victims of violence, noted, profound marginalization can be passed down when victims "did not believe their time or their case was important enough to be prioritized".
Rosemead stands not merely as cinema but as a catalyst urging communities to talk openly about mental health, trauma, and healing. With its all-Asian American creative team led by first-time director Eric Lin, the film has already won Best Narrative Feature at the Bentonville Film Festival and the Prix du Public audience award at Locarno. As sold-out screenings continue with Q&As moderated by figures like Marcia Gay Harden, Julia Fox, Geena Davis, and Awkwafina, Liu's hope is being realized: "When we set out to make this film, our hope was to spark conversation and maybe even open a few hearts".
The film's December expansion to additional cities in January 2026 promises to extend these vital conversations to communities nationwide, challenging the silence that has for too long surrounded Asian American mental health.
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