History in the Making: Cami Kwan on Her Stop-Motion Film “Paper Daughter”
Art often highlights some hidden aspect of the world around us; something that we might never have noticed if we weren’t looking carefully. In that sense, creators can be thought of as a guide, and their creation as a magnifying glass — the work becomes a way to encourage audiences to look a little closer; a way to ask, did you notice that before? Paper Daughter (2026), directed by Cami Kwan, is one such example.
Self-described as a “gothic Chinese American fairy tale,” the short film magnifies a moment in history that many Americans might not be aware of: the immigration of paper daughters and sons during the Chinese Exclusion Act. It emphasizes its message through a unique choice of medium: stop-motion animation. EnVi sat down with director and creator Cami Kwan over Zoom to discuss her lived experience as a Chinese American director, the history behind Paper Daughter, and the film’s festival run.
Meaning in Movement
Cami Kwan is a Los Angeles-based director that specializes in stop-motion animation. She started her professional stop-motion career in 2016 on what she calls her dream job: an educational children’s show for Amazon called Tumble Leaf (2014 – 2019).
“ My whole goal entering animation was to make higher quality movies and TV for kids, because I’m super passionate about the role that animation and media plays in early education,” Kwan explained. “I think it’s a really big way for them to encounter the world, emotions, situations, different philosophies, and world perspectives, and to encounter those in a safe way before they have to encounter them in their real lives.”
While working on Tumble Leaf, Kwan met her now business partners Max Lopez and Sean Malony, who had just started the animation studio Apartment D. They became friends, Kwan became the third partner and co-owner of the studio, and work began in earnest — first only on nights, weekends, and holidays, and then full-time in 2019.
Kwan now hopes that the film can be proof of what Apartment D is capable of as a studio — and what she is capable of as a filmmaker. “Paper Daughter is maybe only the second major foray into making our own original content that we’ve been able to do in the last few years, and so it’s really representative of where we want to go and where I want to go in my career,” Kwan said with a smile.
History in (Stop) Motion
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was designed to limit Chinese immigrants from coming to America. Paper daughters and sons directly rose out of that restriction.
“Paper daughters and paper sons [is] a historical term for people immigrating to the U.S. from China during the Chinese Exclusion Act under the identity of somebody else,” Kwan explained. “Sometimes [these] were false identities, entirely fabricated. Or if somebody in your family died, you could also sell those identities to people in China, and they would come over under those identities. It was a pretty harrowing experience. You had to memorize everything about the identity you’re supposed to be. You were interrogated really intensely.”
The history behind the term hit close to the heart for Kwan, who felt an affinity with these paper sons and paper daughters. After all, Paper Daughter is not only a film highlighting one of the many difficult moments in U.S. history — it’s also a work that has personal ties.
“My family immigrated to the U.S. [around the time of] the Chinese Exclusion Act, so it’s something I just knew about. In the wake of COVID, the rise in anti-Asian hate, hate vibes, hate speech, hate crimes, I ended up doing a lot of learning about the Asian American experience and what racism looks like directed towards Asian Americans. I had to do a lot of backwards experiencing of realizing oh, a lot of my childhood experiences were racism,” Kwan explained. “I went through a tough couple months where I was experiencing a lifetime of microaggressions in a few months once I recontextualized them.”
That experience led Kwan to reflect on her ancestors’ sacrifices, and how she could acknowledge the huge sacrifices they made for their descendants to have a better life. “I have so much opportunity. I’m so privileged. I get to pursue stop-motion animation as a career. Like, the world is burning, and here I am, animating toys,” Kwan said. “I have the best life, and I did nothing to earn it. Paper Daughter really came out of me contending with those feelings of guilt and growing to have a new relationship with my family’s sacrifice and view it not just as a debt, but as an act of love that you don’t have to pay back.”
The Medium, the Method, the Magic
For people unfamiliar with creating stop-motion animation, it seems like an incredibly time consuming process. How long did it take to create Paper Daughter?
“You know, not as long as you think,” Kwan responded with a smile. “ This whole film happened in about eight or nine months.”
“ It (stop-motion animation) is slow and it is hard, but all animation is hard. All animation is slow. I think stop-motion gets that reputation more so than other types of animation because the labor is very tangible. Everybody has experienced the material world; everybody knows exactly what it feels like to have to reach out and move something, right? So that labor is something you can easily imagine doing, and so you’re like, oh my God, that seems really hard.”
Part of Kwan’s career is dedicated to changing this perception of stop-motion animation — if more people don’t immediately think of it as being a slow-to-craft and expensive art form, they might consider telling their story in the medium.
For just an example of how flexible the medium is, Kwan pointed to how the Apartment D crew built the physical elements for Paper Daughter — a story that is able to use physical material (including paper) to further build a narrative.
Since the story combines two different worlds, the team worked to combine two different art styles. Kwan studied Disney’s The Art of Mulan, which she cites as being fundamental to her both as a person and to the visual elements of this film. She was also heavily inspired by stop-motion animator Henry Selick, whose work has what she notes as a “very geometric, planar kind of aesthetic.”
“I really wanted to bring that kind of graphic art design into this as well, because there’s that flip side of being inspired by traditional Chinese art, which is fairly graphic, you know, but it’s also very natural. Instead of sharp lines, it’s got these curves and this naturalism to it.” Kwan demonstrated, moving her hands in a curve. “And so that tension between those two shape languages was something that we definitely explored, where everything associated with the West is very, straight and smooth and angular and pointy, and then everything associated with immigrants and the Chinese experience is a lot softer. A little bit more, like, shades to it, a little more naturalism to it. So you’ll see a lot more fabrics and ropes and flowers versus straight hard lines.”
Festival Season
Paper Daughter is participating in a festival run — including being featured at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.
The path to Annecy (and beyond) was not easy. Kwan admitted that for her and her team, Annecy was a “shoot for the moon” application, and their acceptance felt surreal. However, despite some doubts, she kept moving forward.
“This story, Paper Daughter, is so, so, so specific,” Kwan said, on international audiences’ potential reception. “Even though it’s a very specific story, I really wanted it to have universal appeal because there are universal themes of learning to accept a sacrifice, of guilt, of forgiving yourself, of wearing a mask to survive — things that I think are universal. Using this very human, very universal medium of stop motion to tell this very specific story, I think, helps bridge that potential gap between how specific the story is versus how universal it could be. That was a big reason why I think this film was good in stop motion.”
What’s Next?
Throughout our interview, it became obvious that Cami Kwan works hard to make her goals come true — and her effort is paying off in a big way. When asked about what she has planned post-Annecy, she revealed that there are quite a few things in the pipeline, including the feature script for Paper Daughter (“Very exciting!”), a short film collab with friends from Janet Yang Productions, and some fun potential client projects for Apartment D.
“It is kind of intense and scary sometimes. Have I cried under my desk a few times? Yes, of course. Who hasn’t, you know?” Kwan said, on life post-Paper Daughter. “But in the grand scheme of things, it’s such a wonderful position to be like, wow, my future’s so much broader than it was a year ago. How do I grow to keep up with it?”
Part of her growth is already clear: Kwan is using her work in stop motion to, in her own words, do her part in trying to expand who’s allowed to tell stories. Despite working with incredible female stop-motion artists and creatives, Kwan is only aware of two women who have ever directed a stop-motion feature film: Lotte Reiniger (1926’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed) and Suzannah Clare Templeton (2006’s Peter and the Wolf). The medium is ripe for new perspectives and voices, and Kwan believes that it’s time for a change.
“ I think people are interested in seeing Asian stories told by Asian people,” she said with a smile. “K-pop Demon Hunters just blew the absolute roof off of everything this last summer. I want our own K-pop Demon Hunters! There’s so many women in stop motion, there’s so many Asian women in stop motion, and so many stories that they have ready to tell. I hope that this is just a drop in the coming ocean, the coming tidal wave of more people being given that opportunity.”
Keep up with Cami Kwan’s work by following her on Instagram. You can also follow Apartment D Films on Instagram, subscribe to them on YouTube, or check out their work on their website.
Ready for more perspectives from Asian directors? Learn how Shih-Ching Tsou created her unique film “Left-Handed Girl” here.
