Hard Boiled Eggs
A 10-year-old Chinese American girl who suspects that her mother is cheating after overhearing a mysterious phone call decides to investigate it by herself, only to find the harsh truth that she's been disregarding.
Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Post-Production
Director: Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan
Writer/Producer: Yuky Shen
Producer: Pablo Zamorano
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Logline
A 10-year-old Chinese American girl who suspects that her mother is cheating after overhearing a mysterious phone call decides to investigate it by herself, only to find the harsh truth that she’s been disregarding.
Synopsis
Every morning, YU’s mother, YONG (35), gives YU (10) hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. Even though Yu hates it, she always acts obediently. One day, Yu accidentally sees Yong talking to someone intimately on the phone, suspecting her mother is having an affair.
Tarot card reading tells Yu the mysterious affair will bring everything to “death.” Yu decides to investigate the affair and stops him from destroying her family. She searches Yong’s tote bag at night, trying to locate the affair’s phone number on Yong’s phone, only finding a suspicious green lighter because Yong never smokes.
When she sees a purple mark on Yong’s neck, assuming it’s a hickey from the affair, she can no longer hold her anger and decides to confront her. When Yu gets home, she finds Yong sobbing with bruises all over her body. Yu finally realizes she should’ve blamed her abusive alcoholic father, TANG (35), instead of Yong. She doesn’t say anything but hugs Yong tightly. Yu takes out a rotten hard-boiled egg that she’s been hiding and executes her final revenge…
Meet the Filmmakers
Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan – Director
Yimeng Yuan, aka Yuki, is a filmmaker made in Wuhan and polished in Los Angeles. Following her graduation from the UCLA Art History program, she directed animation for two years before delving into live-action directing and producing, which has since won her screenings at numerous festivals throughout the US and China. Her latest, Fish Tank, debuted at LA Shorts and is moving on to more. She’s currently developing two features with Salon de Paprika, a company she co-founded in 2022 that has since developed a global clientele.
Yuky Shen – Writer/Producer
Yuky Shen is a Shanghai-born, LA-based filmmaker. She produced narrative shorts ranging from WWII drama to Kimchi western and Mobisode series sponsored by Tik Tok that gain more than 110k views. Her thesis film Magdalena has won Best Student Film at The International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography Camerimage, Beverly Hills Film Festival, Indie Shorts Awards Cannes, and was selected in Academy-qualifying film festivals and CAA Moebius showcase. For Yuky, filmmaking is a way of fighting. She believes that movies have the power to touch people, make them ruminate and thus make a change in real life. Under Academy-nominated producer Lianne Halfon’s mentorship, she graduated from American Film Institute with MFA in producing. This year, she is selected as one of the 30 upcoming Film Independent Project Involve fellows.
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Contact
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