Playback’s 10 to Watch 2022: Kristina Wong

The Toronto producer is poised to become a "changemaker" with plans to launch her own production company and an Asian-Canadian crew database.

Playback has been providing a deep dive into the careers of our 2022 10 to Watch recipients. This year’s cohort were selected from 217 submissions and represent a wide array of film and TV talent as producers, writers, directors, and executives. Click here for the other profiles published over the past month.

Navigating Canada’s grant system comes with a steep learning curve for any emerging filmmaker, but for Kristina Wong, it was the unexpected catalyst for her career as a producer.

Wong initially wanted to work as a director after graduating from film school in Toronto, but tells Playback Daily she soon “fell in love with the ability to work with a flow of other people’s creatives ideas and knowing how to get the money,” while also realizing “the power to make things happen, to bring talented people together and not depend on anyone else.”

With a steady stream of credits now under her belt, such as Tammy’s Always Dying and Beacon 23, Toronto-based Wong is poised to make even bigger waves: preparing her first feature film as a lead producer while planning to launch her own production company and an Asian-Canadian crew database to help support IP and grow authentic storytelling within her community.

“I always knew part of my life’s purpose was to help others, and so producing just made sense,” says Wong. “It allowed me to empower diverse creatives, to be a part of changing on-screen representation and run sets with wellness in mind. Producing is the best way I know how to help my community.”

Growing up in the east-end Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Wong saw writing and movies as a way to “understand all these feelings I had inside me as a hyper-sensitive kid,” she says. After getting a bachelor’s degree in film production at York University, she became an intern to music video director Marc André Debruyne. That was followed by work as a production assistant and coordinator on indie feature films, web series and low-budget TV.

“It was a slow grind to even get my foot into the door,” says Wong, who is in her late 20s. “I owe a lot of my first experiences to other people of colour who were willing to give me a chance.”

Wong eventually landed a full-time position as head of productions at JA Productions, where she worked on three feature films — Tammy’s Always Dying, Something You Said Last Night and Ariel — and helped develop other projects. When the pandemic began, she freelanced as a production manager and worked on commercials, music videos, web series (Tokens, season two; CBC’s This Art Works!) and gallery shoots for Prime Video Canadian originals.

She’s also been an executive producer and director’s assistant on season three of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, and is currently the assistant to the EVP of current creative affairs at Boat Rocker Studios, focusing on AMC’s sci-fi series Beacon 23. Shorts she’s produced include Winnifred Jong‘s Distant Cousins, Minya Djacic’s Elephant, Amanda Zhou’s Harmony, Celine Tsai’s Everbliss and Chloe Hung’s Gem & Shaz.

“She knocked Distant Cousins out of the park,” says Jong, noting Wong made the short “look more expensive” by arranging for Super 8 filming on a small budget of $22,000, among other feats. “She’s super organized, she’s passionate. She’s very good with story and IP, finding those stories and championing them.”

Jong says she first met Wong several years ago during Reel Asian’s So You Think You Can Pitch competition and was struck by her professionalism, preparedness, maturity and drive. The two are now developing Distant Cousins as a feature and have also worked together on Jong’s Tokens series.

Jong also plans to direct Wong’s feature Chop Suey Nation, adapted from Canadian author Ann Hui’s 2019 book of the same name, for which Wong has the rights.

“We talk a lot about having an Asian film community and trying to uplift everybody,” says Jong. “A lot of people talk about it, a lot of people make groups, but I think Kristina is the person that will actually see it through. I really think she can be that kind of changemaker.”

Next up on that “changemaker” journey: launching her own production company “to tell stories that explore the human condition through an Asian-Canadian lens.”

“I don’t consider myself purely Chinese or Canadian, so this in-between diasporic perspective is what feels authentic to me, and so I want to focus in on that,” says Wong.

The impetus for the prodco was “hearing so many stories about fantastic creatives giving up their IPs to companies that have no business telling those stories, but they have the track record to get the project greenlight.”

“That scares me, to see stories in the wrong hands,” she says. “I want to protect their IPs, because those stories belong to more than just one person. I want people to not be told their stories won’t sell unless they have a white lead or they change this cultural aspect because it ‘doesn’t make sense.'”

Wong plans to launch the company next year to coincide with work on Chop Suey Nation, coproduced by Geoff Morrison. She says she bought the book as soon as it came out “purely because the synopsis sounded like my own family history and from a perspective that is so rarely seen in cinema. I soon realized it’s not just my story, it’s a whole generation’s story that we just don’t talk about.”

The team is developing the feature with the support of Ontario Creates, but is seeking more development partners, with plans to start pitching it early next year.

Wong wants her company to also serve as “a hub for the community” with her research and database, which she hopes to launch in the new few years. The database began as a personal list of Asian filmmakers she made while searching for a community and others to work with at the start of her career; it grew to become a valuable resource whenever she was asked for diverse crew recommendations.

The database is intended for Asian-Canadian filmmakers with the goal of providing an “accurate picture of where our community stands within the larger picture,” says Wong.

“The key component of this database is the data itself. The very transparent and visible numbers,” she says. “I feel like we are fighting in isolation against systems that have been structured for straight, white male career trajectories. With data, we can clearly define the barriers and come together to make a plan to succeed.”

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