Writer, Director, Storyteller

Heloise Chung is an only child (well, sort of), a military brat, and a Korean American adoptee who got whisked away from her Korean family at the age of three. (To be fair, her biological parents already had three daughters, so obvs they could spare one.)

Unsurprisingly, she spent much of her childhood pretending to be someone else, in faraway lands, and maybe a magical power or two—skills, it turns out, were perfect for becoming a writer!

At Indiana U, Heloise studied communications, environmental science, and photography. Then, she moved to NYC with hopes of pursuing cinematography. Instead, she ended up printing Nan Goldins, casually rubbing elbows with celebs at bartending gigs (once even playing dollar bill poker with Ron Livingston), writing for a startup network's talk show, and working in advertising, à la Mad Men. Talk about detour.

Everything shifted when she landed in LA in 2017. With years of pent-up stories ready to tell, she’s since written and directed 11 no-budget short films and a low-budget web pilot. She’s currently penning a grounded fantasy pilot about transnational adoptions and Korean free divers, along with a sci-fi zombie-adjacent horror feature about a new kind of pandemic. Oh, and she’s in pre-production for her next low-budget short film.

Heloise crafts high-concept, compelling stories with Asian leads that deal with systemic injustice, climate change, the nature of existence, and occasionally yes, messy family dynamics.

When she's not busy writing suspenseful stories, Heloise is out rock climbing, which also requires being suspended, but in the air. Did I mention she’s good with words?

Screenings:

HBO's Women in Comedy Festival 2020
WhoHa-Halloween Horror Comedy 2021, 2022
Asian American Film Thing 2019