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Released
2018 · FILM

Origin Story

Every end has a beginning.

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
106 min
Documentary

Synopsis

When Kulap Vilaysack was 14, she took her father's side in an argument and her mother replied, "Why are you defending him? He's not your real dad." Twenty years later, she's finally ready to learn what that means. ORIGIN STORY is a feature-length, international quest with stops in Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Laos to meet the biological father she never knew. On the road, unforeseen revelations strike as hilarious or heartbreaking, rarely in between. An avid comic book reader with a vigilante character named after her in the DC Comics universe, she must summon the courage of Katharsis, because each question is another step out on a limb. ORIGIN STORY is a deeply personal but universally relevant tale of immigration, conflict, addiction, and personal responsibility. Interviewees in the film include extended family, husband Scott Aukerman, and close friends, like Sarah Silverman, Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael and Howard Kremer.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Oona FlahertyShot by Jonathan NicholasScored by Michael Daniel Cassady

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