Episode 48: OnWriting Live – Banban Cheng & Sasie Sealy, "Lucky Grandma"

OnWriting presents the second in a series of four live recordings of OnWriting in honor of Women's History Month, presented by the WGAE Women's Salon. In each episode, we’re speaking with women screenwriters whose latest projects center on women’s stories.

For the second installment in the series, Geri speaks with Banban Cheng & Sasie Sealy — co-writers of LUCKY GRANDMA.

Banban Cheng is a writer and filmmaker who spent her childhood performing Chinese stand-up comedy in Houston, Texas. Since then, she’s traded the stage for writing and directing movies. Her screenplay TROUBLE TO THE HERD was the winner of the 2019 AsianCinevision SAG-AFTRA Screenplay Award and was a finalist at the 2019 Nashville Film Festival.

She won the 2019 AsianCinevision SAG-AFTRA Screenplay Award for her screenplay TROUBLE TO THE HERD, was awarded NYU’s Wasserman Prize for Filmmaking for her short film TEN & TWO, and received the Sloan Foundation feature screenplay award for her gothic drama SUGAR WATER.

She is also the Creative Director of Format Development at TED, experimenting with and launching new forms of storytelling.

Sasie Sealy is a writer and director with a love of striking visuals and cheeky scripts. She first made her mark in the commercial world of fashion and beauty, and her work in that industry has been featured in Glamour, Refinery29, Teen Vogue, Variety, and Style.com.

Her short films have screened at the Smithsonian Institute and festivals around the world, and she has twice received the short film prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, first for DANCE MANIA FANTASTIC and then for THE ELEPHANT GARDEN.

She was included on the 2020 Alice Initiative list of Emerging Female Directors and the New York Times' 2019 “9 Filmmakers Who Should Be on Your Radar” list.

LUCKY GRANDMA—co-written by Cheng and Sealy and directed by Sealy—a funny and thrilling heist movies starring an ornery, chain-smoking, badass Chinese grandma (Tsai Chin) in New York City who goes all in at the casino, only to put herself and her family in the middle of a gang war. The film—which was the recipient of AT&T and Tribeca Film Festival’s 2018 Untold Stories $1 million filmmaking grant—premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival and is currently available to stream on Hulu and Showtime.

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