By Lana Tania.

PROFESSIONAL SON was born out of my own upbringing in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I attended a private international prep school and was surrounded by the comically wealthy heirs of Southeast Asian old-money dynasties. I wasn’t nearly as wealthy as many of my peers, but I inevitably got swept into their world: birthday parties that booked out entire hotels and theme parks, nights out at clubs the moment we turned 13 (fake IDs weren’t necessary when real ones weren’t even being checked), school trips that required passports, and carpool rides in friends’ chauffeured SUVs. I didn’t mind. It was fun to LARP as a crazy rich Asian on the weekends, and the people around me were frankly some of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever met. My parents always reminded me not to compare myself to them since we came from a different background, but they still supported me just enough to follow the same trajectory: graduate from our English-speaking international school and head abroad for college, because in our bubble, why stay in Indonesia when you could splurge on a three-to-four-year vacation in a non-third world country?

College in the U.S. allowed me to break out of that bubble, but I found an evolved version of the same characters: just slightly older, now repackaged as international students in American colleges. PROFESSIONAL SON’s protagonist, Kevin, is an amalgamation of the various real people I’ve met who belong to that culture; he’s carefree, shallow, and followed by a constant backdrop of extreme wealth. But I never wanted him to stay that way. As a writer, I’m most interested in taking characters who might otherwise exist only as comic relief and humanizing them, using their stories to reflect more universal fears and internal struggles.

When memes about rich international students started circulating — those who engage in shopping sprees at luxury stores in between classes, were gifted sports cars worth well over 100K as their first cars, and spend all of their summers either in Europe or at “internships” in their parents’ companies (or both) — I knew it was the right time to write this film. Around the same time, I had just seen Sean Baker’s Anora and was fascinated by the character of ‘Ivan.’ Watching how audiences interpreted him was fascinating, because to me, he’s really just the perfect example of someone so trapped in the bubble of his upbringing that he’s completely unprepared for the real world.

As someone who constantly feels guilty about having grown up in a similar bubble, one of my biggest fears is realizing I’m just as unequipped to handle reality without the safety net of my family. That fear began to creep into my writing, and Kevin quickly became a manifestation of my deepest anxieties. Every day, I question whether my achievements are truly mine, or whether they only exist because of the foundation my family provided. Every time my parents call, excited to hear about what I’ve accomplished, or post proudly about me on social media, I’m consumed by the fear that they wouldn’t feel the same if they knew how often I feel unproductive, as though I’m squandering the opportunities they have worked so hard to give me. I’ve always carried the worry that I don’t have what it takes to succeed because I’ve never known true hardship, having grown up in such a protected environment. Even though I know I work hard, I constantly question whether it’s enough when those around me seem to have endured and achieved so much more on their own. I wanted to pour all of that into Kevin.

Kevin is someone who literally wouldn’t exist without his father’s money, connections, and safety net, and he finally comes face to face with that truth on what should have been just another night of meaningless celebration. PROFESSIONAL SON plays as a kind of horror story about the slow realization of what happens when dependence on family makes you unable to stand on your own. Kevin’s lifestyle might seem unrecognizable to the average person, but his fear isn’t; at some point, we’ve all felt unequipped for adulthood, even if, unlike Kevin, most of us didn’t show up to college in a luxury car with insurance premiums higher than our tuition. In addition to all of that, I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to pull a Back to the Future and meet a younger version of my dad. That added layer of silly sci-fi was the key to making the film feel like a full-on trip, the kind of epiphany you’d only stumble into after a completely blackout drunk night out.

Any writer knows – and I know this especially as a former script coverage intern who has passed on more scripts than I can count – that sharing your own work is one of the most embarrassing things you can do. Even if you’re writing a comedy, there are parts of you embedded in the story, so rejection always feels personal. With PROFESSIONAL SON, I felt confident that the script was outlandish and silly enough that people would at least enjoy reading it, even if it wasn’t selected. Still, I worried it might not resonate, given how niche and unrelatable the culture at its center can seem. That’s why it meant so much to me when so many people responded so positively. Some interpreted it as a story about the immigrant experience, others as an intimate portrait of a father-son relationship, and I cherished every one of those readings.

Our seven weeks of pre-production were, as per usual, akin to trying to save a sinking ship. Luckily, I had the best producers I could ask for, Laura B. Abellan and Sloane Shevin, who steered us forward with such grace. This project was an ambitious leap compared to most DKA productions, which tend to live in apartments, classrooms, or other easy-to-find spaces, and I knew that especially well as the chapter’s Cinematic Affairs Co-Chair at the time. The logistics were predictably chaotic; we didn’t lock a location until the night before our first shoot day, and on the second day, we swapped locations on a whim and ended up with a full guerrilla moment in Parking Structure 3. Through it all, my team of DeKAs stayed enthusiastic and supportive, as we’re all no strangers to the rollercoaster of indie, low-budget student filmmaking. On a personal note, I’m happy that my beloved Lexus IS is now immortalized as a movie car, and that I finally got to try herbal movie cigarettes for the first time.

Visually, the film owes so much to my DP, Cruz Carratala, who had also been my classmate for the past year. Yeah, this ended up being one of those films that lived on a gimbal for about 90% of its shots because we were chasing some ambitious oners. From the start, we knew we didn’t want to settle for a series of unmotivated, static coverage. We pushed for courageous, dynamic camerawork to really lean into the tragicomedy of it all. It was definitely a challenge, what with over half the script being just a two-person conversation that we had to work hard to keep visually engaging without falling back on basic shot-reverse-shot coverage. But we pulled it off!

The world of PROFESSIONAL SON also wouldn’t exist without the energy and dedication of our lead ensemble – Edwin Zha, Kosi Eguchi, Joseph Rosales, and Rosalie Chiang – who brought their characters to life with just the right mix of silliness and groundedness. I especially remember a conversation with Edwin, who played the one and only Kevin, where he told me he was surprised to even see a casting call for a film like this, let alone as a DKA production, because he didn’t expect such a hyper-specific culture – one he himself had been pulled into as someone also from an international background – to ever be explored in a student project. I knew right then that he was perfect for the role; it required a tricky balance between the fratty bravado of a rich kid and a kind of deep vulnerability and naivety that only someone who’s actually been around those exact types of people could really capture.

Looking back, PROFESSIONAL SON has been one of the most meaningful projects I’ve ever worked on, not just because it let me poke fun at the absurd culture of privilege I grew up being surrounded by, but because it forced me to confront my own insecurities about dependency, identity, and what it means to grow up. Translating the script from page to screen came with its fair share of chaos and compromise, but also moments of collaboration and discovery that reminded me why I love filmmaking. PROFESSIONAL SON was a reminder that writing is always, in some way, autobiographical, even when you’re writing about someone very different from yourself.