Jeremy Thao (he/him) is a Hmong American filmmaker, writer, and community organizer based in Lawrenceville, Georgia, currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in screenwriting at the University of Georgia. He is the writer-director of Wokman. Find his work at linktr.ee/wokman.

This profile is part of a series introducing the artists and cultural workers in the Outside In Arts and Culture Fellowship, a part of Smart Growth America's Outside In project. The project documents the histories and futures of suburban Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across Atlanta, Dallas, and Memphis.

Jeremy Thao is a self-described OTP-er. “OTP” is Atlanta shorthand for “Outside The Perimeter,” or outside the Interstate 285 loop that circles the urban core and inner suburbs of the city. He grew up along the stretch from Gwinnett County to Athens—Winder, Monroe, Lawrenceville—and still prefers the edges of metro Atlanta to its center.

His short film Wokman, an intergenerational story set in a Chinese immigrant family's restaurant in the American South, was made in response to the rise in anti-Asian violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. The film has been featured in 16 film festivals.

Building on this success, the Outside In fellowship has helped Jeremy connect his personal storytelling to the larger history of AAPI suburban communities, while beginning to recognize the everyday places of his own life as part of that story.

What follows is a filmmaker turning from a fictionalized world to the real, documented one—and discovering that the ordinary suburban places of his life are part of the story.

The conversation below has been organized and condensed for clarity.

Tell us about yourself and your creative journey.

I'm Hmong American, the first of four children born to two refugees. I was born and raised in Fresno, California, and we moved to Georgia in 2000. My dad and uncles worked the first wave of grocery-store sushi counters at the Publix in Lenox Square. Those weekends helping with inventory are some of the experiences I’ve drawn on creatively.

My path hasn’t been linear. I actually failed out of college three times before I turned 20. At 25, I moved back home, and right when film production in Georgia was taking off, I enrolled in a new film program. I started as a screenwriter, producing classmates' shorts to get on set, and then fell in love with directing.

Your short film Wokman seems like a turning point. Tell us about it.

Wokman consumed me for about nine years. I finally wrote it down in April 2021 in response to the anti-Asian hate during Covid-19. A mentor told me one of the most effective ways to combat anti-Asian violence was to share stories of our families.

While the film draws on real elements and real dialogue from my own life, they’re presented through a fictional Chinese immigrant family running a restaurant called China Wok. At that time, I didn't want people asking, "This is your family? This happened to you?" I wanted to share the Hmong-ness in my other, more Hmong-centric projects on their own terms. The restaurant’s geographic location is never named, because there's a China Wok in every city in America. I wanted every viewer to think, that's my China Wok.

Two weeks after we submitted the script, the Atlanta spa shootings happened . That day changed me on a molecular level. It brought an urgency I'd never understood before, and in response, I invited essentially every Asian American woman filmmaker in Atlanta onto the production. By the time we finished, cast and crew combined, we had eighteen Asian American women. I just wanted the community to know: you are welcome here.

How does the buffer between your own life and your storytelling show up now?

That need for a buffer is now completely gone. I have projects I'm working on that are deeply connected to the history and the culture of the Hmong people. One I've been working on, based partly on my own family, is about a young Hmong man tempted to join a gang in 1990s Fresno. I've done a lot of research into the beginnings of the Hmong in Fresno, the development over the decades, what caused that surge, and where those people are now. I haven't learned about my people anywhere else, so I’ve had to go seek this out myself.

What's stayed with you from the Outside In fellowship sessions so far?

The session with the Dallas Asian American Historical Society (DAAHS) was my favorite. I've spent nine years entirely focused on a fictionalized world with Wokman, so every time Stephanie shared a new slide of actual family histories, it made me emotional to realize we'd been working independently on similar projects, 1,500 miles apart. It makes me wonder what other complementary projects and ideas are being worked on that we don't even know about yet. That's what fuels me about building community.

Has the Outside In fellowship changed how you see the suburban places you know?

I've spent most of my life moving through these spaces without questioning why they're built the way they are. Now I pay more attention. I look at a shopping center or a grocery store differently and think about how these ordinary places became gathering spaces and cultural anchors for immigrant communities.

As Wokman pulled me onto panels and into interviews that often weren't about film at all, I’ve realized I need to be more active in civics and local government. I've always said Wokman was made to help people start difficult conversations. If I'm going to claim that about a film I made, then I myself need to start and engage in difficult conversations well beyond filmmaking.

What would you build with this work?

My dream is a Buford Highway Food and Film Festival—celebrating the cultures, foods, and stories of the people who live and work along Buford Highway, an immigrant commercial corridor stretching northeast from the city of Atlanta through DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. I believe Buford Highway and Duluth are heartbeats of Georgia, particularly in the Asian American community. A lot of people don’t know that Korean is the third most spoken language in the state. Creating a festival about a particular place is a way of claiming that place and saying this is ours.

Why does the Outside In program matter?

Our communities deserve to understand not only how we came to be here, but how the places around us have shaped our lives. That knowledge gives us the power to preserve what we've built, imagine what comes next, and have a voice in shaping the future of the places we call home.