MAIFF 2026  -

EMW

Dad Vs Bees

June 12

5:00 PM

Goethe Institute Montreal

Documentry

20

minutes

English

Content Warning:

About the Film

Director

David Quach

Country

Australia / USA

Year

2026

Program

EMW 1

Curated by

MAiFF Programming Team

Description

Synopsis | A 79 year old Asian man is on a quest to rid his beloved garden of a bee infestation. In his way are not just bees but age, language, intergenerational trauma and the struggles of being a refugee in Australia.

Programmer's note | There is something almost endearing, lovely, even faintly comic, in the sight of an old man setting out to defend his garden. Yet the film follows this small commotion and quickly opens onto another layer of time. Clearing a single beehive becomes a confrontation with the limits of an aging body. It becomes a struggle to endure a world in which language does not fully reach. It becomes a matter of pride, marked by the small cracks that appear each time he has to rely on his children. The film touches the weight of a life hidden inside the smallest routines. This minor disturbance in the garden gradually becomes a portrait of how long one person has tried to hold on to his place in the world by his own strength. The film captures the weight of a time once impossible to grasp, revealed only in the face of an enemy that can be touched. Memories of refuge and migration, the barrier of language, the distance between generations, and a body no longer as it once was all press into the present at once. In that very moment, survival becomes the most tangible again: to clear, to endure, to ask, and to persist. In those movements, the film shows how large and stubborn dignity can remain. A person’s dignity stays by their side longest in struggles that seem trivial from the outside. Perhaps life reveals itself more nakedly before a few bees than before any grand tragedy.

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About the Director
David Quach
Director
DAVID QUACH (he/him) is a data scientist, storyteller and filmmaker based in Chicago. He shot his debut film Dad Vs Bees as a way to reconnect with his family in Australia after being away for 4 years. David developed his storytelling style in The Moth community, where his stories brought humor and heart to emotionally challenging moments in his life. David’s creative style has also been shaped by being raised by Asian refugee parents in Australia, growing up with 3 sisters, and Barbara Minto’s book on effective business writing.
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