The Shangri-la Cafe is a 2000 short film written and directed by Lily Mariye. The film is about a Japanese American family who conceal their heritage and reluctantly adopt discriminatory practices in order to operate a Chinese restaurant in Las Vegas in the late 1950s. [1] The Los Angeles Times calls the film well-reviewed, and it won awards at festivals such as the Brussels Independent Film Festival and Nashville Independent Film Festival. [2]
The director began working on the film in 1998, working with the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women. [2]
The Los Angeles Times calls the film well-reviewed, and it won awards at festivals such as the Brussels Independent Film Festival and Nashville Independent Film Festival. [2] It was positively reviewed for its portrayal of 1950s racism by SFGate, which called it "unusually sensitive to the heightened experience of children." [3] The Chicago Reader wrote that Mariye set "a preachy tone" in the film. [1] Edward Guthmann from the San Francisco Chronicle, Jonathan Kaplan, and Lesli Linka Glatter praised Mariye's directing debut. The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Rechtshaffen described the film as a "tender, bittersweet childhood recollection of a not always glittering Las Vegas past."