When a woman with repressed anger issues is forced on stage to take part in an unsettling magic act, it unleashes her rage in the form of an alter ego who drags her into a surreal, darkly comedic spiral of self-destruction.
Jo Suh, an Asian-American playwright in her mid-30s, is paralyzed by self-doubt, writer's block, and deeply repressed anger issues. Despite graduating from a prestigious program, she has been unable to write anything new since her mildly promising school thesis. Instead, she’s stuck in an unpaid dramaturg fellowship, juggling an embarrassing bar job, and feeling overshadowed by her more successful peers. Her only outlet is an online alter ego she created named Ida, a fictionalized bold playwright through whom she rants and trolls Reddit.
One day, she is unexpectedly shortlisted for a career-changing grant that could catapult her. As she awaits anxiously, she attends her theater fundraiser where a magician, Wanda The Marvelous forces her to participate in an unsettling magic act on stage. It triggers a panic attack that is caught on video, which goes viral and earns her public scorn as an unhinged woman attacking the sweet elderly magician.
The viral video leads to public vitriol, professional ostracization, and most devastatingly, being denied the coveted grant. Determined to clear her name, she uses her alter ego, Ida to expose Wanda as the true perpetrator. But her road to revenge quickly unleashes long dormant rage, and she is forced to face her inner demons before they destroy everything she holds dear.
Born in Madrid, and raised in Maryland, Christina YR Lim is a Korean–American writer/director who explores Asian diasporas through fish-out-of-water, genre-bending stories. Lim began in theatre before turning to film, earning her MFA in directing and screenwriting from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
As a writer, Lim won SeriesFest's Women’s Writing Competition garnering her a development deal with Kyra Sedgwick's Big Swing Productions. Her feature script, GYOPO was a semifinalist for the Academy Nicholl's Fellowship and was selected for the 2022-23 Black List x Women in Film Feature Residency. It was recently selected for Wscripted's Cannes Screenplay List (2024) where it was presented at the Producers’ Network at Cannes. Her latest script, ICON was selected for EAVE's Ties That Bind, participating in TCCF in Taipei and the Far East Film Market in Udine, Italy. It was also a selection of Cine Qua Non's Storylines lab and Stowe x Sidewalk’s Story Lab.
Lim's films have been screened and awarded at multiple film festivals including Bentonville, RiverRun, Cinequest, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, Catalina Film Festival, and CAAMFest. She co-directed SAMIR, a feature film, funded and distributed by Warner Bros., which premiered at Heartland Int. Film Festival. She has also directed films in Shanghai and Beijing and is an alumnus of Yale’s directing lab and Reykjavík International Film Festival’s Talent Lab.
Lim's first feature film as an auteur, B-SIDE: FOR TAYLOR was distributed by Buffalo 8 and EST Studios and released in May 2024. Most recently, she filmed a proof-of-concept for her second feature, GYOPO as a recipient of The Black List x GM incubator fund and Panavision’s New Filmmaker Grant. Objectively Good Media is producing the feature film set for production in the fall of 2025.
