Independent Lens
Try Harder!
At a prestigious public high school with a majority Asian American student body, high achieving seniors share the dream, and the stress, of getting into a top university.
My Tiger Mom
Concerned about where her young daughters might go to college one day, award-winning filmmaker Debbie Lum sets out to discover whether being a "tiger mother" will turn her kids into "the model minority."
- Funding Initiative
- Diversity Development Fund
Producer/Director
Debbie Lum
Debbie Lum explored cultural stereotypes in My Tiger Mom and Seeking Asian Female. She made two short docs for Wayne Wang about his films Chan Is Missing and Dim Sum, co-produced and edited Kelly Loves Tony (PBS's POV), and edited To You Sweetheart, Aloha and the Emmy-winning a.k.a. Don Bonus (POV). Lum wrote and directed fictional films Chinese Beauty, A Great Deal! and One April Morning.
- Other ITVS Films
- Seeking Asian Female
- Try Harder!
We fund untold stories for public media.
Learn more about funding opportunities with ITVS.
The Film
My Tiger Mom is a feature-length documentary about Asian American mothers and daughters relentlessly pursuing their greatest aspiration: getting into an elite American university. Speaking with mothers, parents, educators, counselors, and others in the educational achievement industry, the film is a captivating personal documentary about the role of parents in their children’s success. Set in the competitive high schools of the San Francisco Bay Area, it follows a recent immigrant mom from China along with other so-called "Tiger Mothers" and their daughters through a grueling college application journey that ends in either admission or rejection by the school of their dreams. Through the lens of race, culture, and motherhood, this intimate story asks: what price must we pay in our obsessive rush toward success and achievement today?
