Thrust into the spotlight as China’s first Afro-Chinese pop idol, Fei Fei moves to Los Angeles to reinvent herself as an artist, only to discover that the family she left behind holds the truth about who she is and the future she’s trying to build.
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US is an intimate character-driven feature documentary following Fei Fei, China’s first Afro-Chinese pop idol, whose pursuit of an artistic career in Los Angeles draws her back into a fractured family history that reshapes who she is. The film explores the emotional and cultural legacies of migration and displacement through the lens of a mother-daughter relationship.
Xinyan Yu is an Emmy-winning filmmaker with nearly 15 years of experience crafting intimate, character-driven films across continents. From factory floors in rural Ethiopia to wildfire zones in Hawaii, she specializes in vérité and investigative storytelling that blends cinematic intimacy with journalistic rigor through a deeply human lens. A former BBC producer and now an independent filmmaker, Xinyan has directed and produced work for major broadcasters including PBS, BBC, Channel News Asia and NHK. Her feature debut, Made in Ethiopia, won a Special Jury Mention at the 2024 Tribeca Festival and went on to tour more than 50 international festivals with support from the Ford Foundation, IDA, and the Danish Film Institute. She also directed Maui’s Deadly Firestorm for PBS Frontline, winner of an Emmy and the Scripps Howard Journalism Award for excellence in climate and community reporting. Her latest documentary short Cindy Tran: From Here to Here for PBS American Masters premiered at DOCNYC in November 2025. Xinyan is a New America National Fellow, a Firelight Media Doc Lab fellow, a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist fellow and a Yaddo Residency alum.
