“We wanted to tell a story with a woman we love,” say directors Cassandra Surina and David Ehrenreich. “A true outlier wherever she calls home.” Graphic designer Asami Tsukada is a Japanese expat living in Canada. She has lived half of her life in Tokyo and the other half in Vancouver, but has found “community and isolation, acceptance and discrimination in both cultures equally.”  

Cheeto Monster, named after Tsukada’s favorite electric orange snack, sleepwalks between effervescent vignettes of her everyday life. While shopping for groceries in Vancouver’s Japantown, playing video games in her backyard, and going for a spin on a ride in her local park, the idiosyncratic designer contemplates gender and identity from a place of honesty. 

“This story examines her relationship between place, culture, and identity,” the directors continue. “We make light of her tenuous relationship with space and celebrate how she navigates the world in her own genuine and enigmatic way.”