When I was 9-years-old, I wanted my classmates to come with me to explore the woods behind our school. I had an overactive imagination and if something pulled my attention, I had to follow it to the very end. I didn’t know how I could convince anyone to come along, but I loved drawing and I especially loved making comics, so I hatched a plan.

I didn’t know what was in the woods, so I made what every kid wants to stumble across: a treasure map. I drew a huge forest and detailed it with trees, boulders, cliffs, hideouts — and between all of this, weaving throughout the woods, was a winding pathway leading to an “X.” As I finished drawing, my friends came by and asked if it was real. The plan worked. My friends were captivated. “Is there really treasure in the woods?” one of them asked.

The next day, my friends and I stood at the edge of the woods and looked deep inside, past the trees, into the deep abyss. It was eerily quiet. Adrenaline rushed through my body. I stepped forward to go in, but then a voice called out. “What do you think you’re doing?!” Our teacher ran over. She saw the four of us near the woods and caught us before we could go in.

I ended up in the principal’s office where my parents were called in to discuss my “troubling” treasure map. When we got back home, my parents were so upset they threw all of my comics away. I could feel the anger in their voices and the rage in their eyes. Looking back, I guess I really was a troublemaker, but that’s because I always felt out of place. My classmates’ families had lived in New Jersey for generations while my parents were Filipino refugees from Kuwait. It was hard to connect with my classmates, but when I started drawing comics, people gravitated to me.

I wrestled with those feelings my whole life until I started making films in New York. I didn’t know anyone in the city, but whenever I worked on set, I felt seen. I learned how to connect with people through filmmaking just as I did with comics as a child. When I told my parents I was going to pursue film, they were hysterical. The look on their faces was the same as when I got in trouble for my treasure map, but this time I knew it wasn’t anger. It was fear. As refugees and immigrants, fear has always been deeply entwined in their lives: the fear of loss and failure and alienation. But what they don’t realize is that they’ve inspired me to be brave and go on adventures, because even though fear shaped their lives, so has courage.

Making movies helped me connect with people, and having worked in the industry strengthened that conviction even more. Movies can spotlight the misery we feel everyday and, instead of pushing it down, allow us to heal through connection. It can give voice to the anger and loneliness we experience as we navigate a world that constantly alienates us from one another. Through film, I hope to inspire people to connect with others.