Center for Asian American Media
Directors’ Statement
Upon finishing “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” I decided, as I often have with my independent features, to bookend it with an edgier low budget companion. I had done this previously with “Eat a Bowl of Tea” and “Life is Cheap,” as well as “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face.” “The Princess of Nebraska” would become the companion film for “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.”
A few particular moments inspired me to pursue “The Princess of Nebraska.” I had always been intrigued by Yiyun Li”s original story of a young Chinese woman in America, faced with the very lonely decision of whether to have an abortion or keep her baby. But I wanted to alter the approach just slighty, making Sasha the most current representation of new China, part of the young, brash, and fearless generation.
Although both born in Beijing, the fifteen years that separate the two protagonists in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “The Princess of Nebraska” couldn’t make them more different. Yilan in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” is burdened by the constraints of her family and cultural history. Sasha, on the other hand, is totally unencumbered; no history, no moral guideposts and no spirituality or religion. Quite the opposite, nothing restrains her, and this is what drew me to the story.
