See
Y'all
On Set

“I'm finally going back.

After years of drifting, searching, worrying, living like a nomad, longing for a place to call home, I'm finally going back.

And this time, it feels different.

Every previous trip was shadowed by anxiety: finding places to stay, switching rental cars, mapping logistics, balancing budgets, floating from one Airbnb to another. The underlying scarcity of having no home and no stability, of not knowing where I belonged. The quiet terror of drifting hidden beneath the guise of freedom. The longing for someone or somewhere to lean on. The soft, persistent hum of inadequacy. Those thoughts occupied every corner of my mind, leaving no room for peace.

On the surface, almost nothing has changed. It is still Airbnbs, rental cars, tight budgets, and the same grinding logistics.

But then Moglie started an Instagram group chat and sent four words:

"See y'all on set."

It hit me right in the deepest place, and everything shifted.

Is it that my producers from four years ago still held enough passion to organize a retrospective screening and bring our cast and crew back together? Or that a simple get-together reminded me I’m not entirely a lone drifter wandering through a distant land? Or was it something greater that I had completely forgotten through years of rootlessness, just as how Odysseus, distracted by every trial along the road,  forgot the triumph, blood and tears from the great battlefield on his endless journey home?

Four years ago, we marched into the Pacific Ocean and the coastal forests as if going to a war. We made a film that left the cast and crew in tears. We charged into the battlefield with nothing but raw courage, reckless faith, and a sheer passion for cinema, giving everything we had like pure-hearted children.

They gave me a piece of life I dreamed of, and I returned them a film they loved. Together, we made the impossible happen. And when it ended, I thought that was it.  People meet, part, scatter onto their own paths,  like dreams in the night, one after another. Life carries us forward, the past turns to ash and dust.
How could I have known it would become the seed of everything to come?

Because of that film, I received a scholarship and went to film school, where I met Lionel, my cinematographer, who awakened in me a new way of perceiving cinema; and because of that, I made more films. And through them I met Shanshan, who stood beside me through the darkest nights of my soul; and Lousie, who led me toward my first feature, and then Odet, who opened the door to  AI filmmaking, and Eddie, who valued my work and saved it from the edge of a cliff; and the great Stephen, who saw and treated me as a true artist; and Inez, who became my sole anchor through two long years of drifting. 

Is is all because of that initial film that these people and stories came to exist. How could I have ever guessed that during that fearless shoot four years ago, among those roaring Pacific waves and misty cliffs, that the home I spent years frantically searching for had already begun building itself, brick by brick?

And somewhere along the way, I lost sight of all this.  Instability and disappointment clouded my vision until they were all I could see. 

Then that message arrived.

"See y'all on set."

Suddenly, every stray thread pulled tight. Every line connected. For the first time, I could see the full tapestry. As much as I had become a lost drifter, I finally remembered: I was once a brave warrior.

And the film we made together—driven by nothing other than pure devotion to cinema—was the source of everything..

I never needed to search for home anywhere else.

In that moment I realized, that everything had changed.

This return won't be another drifter's passage, another season of longing, wandering and daydreaming.

It will be a homecoming.

What strikes me as almost mystical is the timing.

Two years ago, when I set foot back onto that soil across the ocean, I felt like a nestling whose wings were still soft—timid, cautious, helpless, unbearably alone.

Around that same time, Inez arrived in LA for film school.

I never imagined she would become my only anchor  in this land.

She helped me navigate logistics, settle into a life that kept changing, drove with me through foreign nights, and simply existed somewhere on the same continent. We rarely talked, and we often lived hundreds of miles apart. Yet as long as she was on that North America land, I never felt completely adrift.

And now, just as I've finally grown into myself—finally found my independence and gathered enough courage to return and conquer this land, she is graduating.

She leaves on the exact day I arrive.

Is that merely coincidence?

Or is it because I no longer need an anchor? Because I'm finally ready to stand alone on the battlefield, trusting that once I take my post on the field, those meant to fight beside me will gather, and we will become an army once more?

Whatever lies behind the timing, I now know one thing for certain.

I am no longer the person who left.

Something has grown inside me.

Everything I once believed was missing now feels as though it's simply waiting farther down the road.

And above all, my films have become my deepest well of confidence and strength.

There are more battlefields to conquer,

More comrades I have yet to meet,

More stories to be filmed.

More art waiting to be born.

And for this homecoming—

I'm ready.

Because home is no longer a place I search for.

Home is something I build.