Liquor Store Dreams

POV
  • Feature Film
  • 2023
  • 90 Mins

Two Korean American children of liquor store owners reconcile their own dreams with those of their immigrant parents. They confront the complex legacies of LA's racial landscape, including the 1991 murder of Latasha Harlins and the 1992 uprisings sparked by the police beating of Rodney King, while engaged in current struggles for social and economic justice. Co-presented with The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).

Based on similar topics

Whose Streets?

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

When unarmed teenager Michael Brown is killed by police and left lying in the street for hours, it marks a breaking point for the residents of the St. Louis area and beyond. Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the ...

QUEST

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Clip

Filmed with vérité intimacy for nearly a decade, QUEST is the moving portrait of a family from North Philadelphia. Beginning during the Obama presidency, Christopher "Quest" Rainey and his wife, Christine'a "Ma Quest," raise a family while nurturing a ...

Swim Team

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Feature Film

Parents of a boy on the autism spectrum form a competitive swim team, recruiting other teens on the spectrum and training them with high expectations and zero pity. Swim Team chronicles the extraordinary rise of three diverse young athletes, capturing ...

Raising Bertie

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Feature Film

Raising Bertie is an intimate portrait of three African American boys as they face a precarious coming of age in rural Bertie County, North Carolina. Like many rural areas, Bertie County struggles with a dwindling economy, a declining population, and ...

Tribal Justice

  • Feature Film
  • 2017

Feature Film

In Tribal Justice, two Native American judges reach back to traditional concepts of justice in order to reduce incarceration rates, foster greater safety for their communities and create a more positive future for youth. By addressing the root causes of ...

StoryCorps Shorts: The Temple of Knowledge

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

Ronald Clark's father was a custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library ...

A Conversation with My Black Son

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

For generations, parents of black boys across the U.S. have rehearsed, dreaded and postponed œThe Conversation. But when their boys become teenagers, parents must decide how to handle discussions about race. In this short film originally published by The ...

Mother's Day

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

Once a year on Mother's Day, a charity bus service takes children to visit their mothers in prison across California. Nearly one in ten of the state's children have a parent in prison. Many are unable to regularly visit their ...

StoryCorps Shorts: Driven

  • Short Film
  • 2016

Short Film

Wendell Scott was the first African American inducted in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. His son, Frank, remembers what it took for his father to cross the finish line at racetracks throughout the South in the '60s and '70s.

From Damascus to Chicago

  • Short Film
  • 2017

Short Film

In the documentary short From Damascus to Chicago, two young Syrian siblings recently resettled in Chicago enroll in a dance class, while the film follows their family's experiences in navigating a new city and country.

Joe's Violin

  • Short Film
  • 2017

Short Film

In the Oscar-nominated Joe's Violin, a donated musical instrument forges an improbable friendship. 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold and 12-year-old Bronx school girl Brianna Perez show how the power of music can bring light in the darkest of times, and ...

Graven Image

  • Short Film
  • 2018

Short Film

Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument: Georgia’s Stone Mountain.

The Changing Same

  • Short Film
  • 2019

Short Film

In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where resident and poet L. Lamar Wilson runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history. A co-presentation ...

Stay Close

  • Short Film
  • 2019

Short Film

Stay Close blends home videos and animation in an expressionistic montage to tell the underdog story of Keeth Smart, an African American fencer from Brooklyn who overcomes a gauntlet of hardships on his road to the Olympics.

Crisanto Street

  • Short Film
  • 2020

Short Film

In the shadow of Silicon Valley, a hidden community thrives despite difficult circumstances. For one resident, eight-year-old Geovany Cesario, impending change is bittersweet.

Gentlemen of Vision

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Gentlemen of Vision follows a year in the life of coach, counselor and founder Marlon Wharton, and his 2015-2016 class of young Black males as he strives to rewrite future prospects for his students. While striving for excellence in school ...

For Ahkeem

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Expelled from high school, Daje Shelton is only 17 years old when she is sentenced by a judge – not to prison, but to an alternative school, the Innovative Concept Academy. It offers Daje one last chance to earn a high ...

Agents of Change

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

Agents of Change examines the racial conditions on college campuses across the U.S. in the late 1960’s, focusing on student demands at two seminal protests: San Francisco State in 1968 and Cornell University in 1969. Many of the ...

100 Years

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

100 Years: One Woman's Fight for Justice​ is the compelling story of Elouise Cobell, a petite Blackfeet warrior from Montana, the great granddaughter of the legendary, Mountain Chief. As an advocate for Native American financial self-determination and independence, she conducted ...

MILWAUKEE 53206

  • Feature Film
  • 2018

Trailer

MILWAUKEE 53206​ introduces viewers to a community with the highest rate of incarcerated African American men in the U.S. The unvarnished film unfolds through the stories of postal code 53206 residents directly impacted by imprisonment: Beverly Walker and her ...
SVG/POVCreated with Sketch.

Race/Related

  • Interactive
  • 2016

Clip

In 2016 POV partnered with The New York Times on the "embedded mediamaker" project, in which three filmmakers fluent in digital media spent several months working at the Times, creating interactive video projects about race and ethnicity. The work was ...
SVG/POVCreated with Sketch.

Snapchat Films

  • Interactive
  • 2016
In 2016, POV produced the first independent films ever for Snapchat Discover, distributed in partnership with the short-form digital content creator NowThis. In Lizzie Jacobs' We'll Still Be Here, dominoes players keep their beloved game alive while a neighborhood changes ...
SVG/POVCreated with Sketch.

Whiteness Project

  • Interactive
  • 2014
Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race. Whiteness Project conducts interviews with people from all walks of life and localities in which they are asked about ...
SVG/POVCreated with Sketch.

Empire

  • Interactive
  • 2014
The Dutch East and West India Companies once controlled vast trading networks that stretched from the Cape of Good Hope to the Indonesian archipelago, and from New York to South America's Wild Coast. Although they came in pursuit of short-term ...

Film Credits

  • So Yun Um Director/Producer
  • Eddie Kim Producer

Critical Acclaim

Liquor Store Dreams is one of those quietly powerful films that may appear on the surface to be little more than an extended home movie, but should prove to have a devastating and emotional impact on all who are lucky to see it.

Peter Sobczynski, RogerEbert.com

Press Room

POV Announces the ‘Our America: Documentaries in Dialogue’ PBS Station 2024 Grantees American Documentary Celebrates Public Media Industry Veteran Chris Hastings with the Industry Trailblazer Award at Fall GalaFest POV Wins A News & Documentary Emmy® Award for Eat Your Catfish
More from The Press Room

Broadcast schedule

Check your local PBS station
for upcoming airings of POV

More from this series

Learn more about POV