A viral hate crime rockets a local drag queen into global notoriety, and now everybody wants a piece of her. Reality bends under the weight of public attention as she struggles to reclaim her own narrative.
In AFTER WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LIBRARY, Akita YaHeart (aka Max Chan) spends her nights performing ridiculous duets with her drag sister Tonya Hardon, her days teaching elementary school with her work wife and activist, Evie, and her weekends hanging out with her autistic twin brother Mikey. Chaos erupts when her Drag Story Hour at an East Bay library gets stormed by rightwing extremists. In search of a resolution, she pursues the media, law enforcement, and politics, but reckons with how much she is willing to sacrifice for the fantasy of justice.
Kyle Casey Chu (AKA Panda Dulce) is a Filmmaker, Author and a founding queen of Drag Story Hour. She is currently a 2024-2025 FilmHouse Resident at SFFILM.
In 2022, far-right extremists stormed her reading in San Lorenzo, making global headlines. Based on the incident, her short screenplay, "After What Happened at the Library" won WeScreenplay, Titan Awards and SF Indie's Short Screenplay Competitions. With support from Sundance, SFFILM, Talon Entertainment, the SF Arts Commission and Skywalker Sound, the screenplay was produced and will premiere at Florida Film Festival and SF International Film Festival in April 2025.
This short is a proof-of-concept for her debut narrative feature film. The script is in an advanced draft and was workshopped at Sundance’s Trans Possibilities Intensive, Lambda Literary’s Writers Retreat and Film Fatales.
Kyle's debut novel, "The Queen Bees of Tybee County" (HarperCollins, 2025), was recently optioned by Lambur Productions into a UK TV show.
Florida Film Festival, Special Jury Award
Director - Syra McCarthy
Writer, Actor - Kyle Casey Chu
Sound Mixer - Skywalker Sound
Writer - Roisin Isner
