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When a man in his late 30s finds himself unhappy running his family’s funeral home, he stumbles into what he thinks is his 20-year high school reunion. There, he is mistaken for a billionaire alum.
That’s the premise of Mountain View resident John W. Kim’s independent feature film “Reunion,” which debuts at the Cinequest Film Festival on March 15 in San Jose. Reunion guests vie for the attention of the main character, Guy Park, who they believe is an uber-successful former classmate, who they don’t actually remember.
“I wanted to put a lead character in what I thought was in the worst possible position, which is being trapped in a life that he didn’t really choose,” said writer-director Kim, who grew up in Palo Alto. “High school has a seminal role to play in the development of American kids. You always look back … and think, ‘Who was I when I was 17 or 18 years old and what did I want?’ Then you look around at your peers, and say, ‘Who were these people and which one of us was successful?’ That’s a very dangerous game to play.”
One of the major themes of the movie is the danger of comparison shopping, wishing one is a little bit taller, prettier, richer or thinner and, only then, will one’s life be perfect. Kim uses a reunion as a plot device because people often reassess their lives at these events.
Kim saw parallels between the points in “Reunion” while watching Oakland’s Alysa Liu win gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics for figure skating. He was struck by how she would not compete unless she could do it on her own terms.
“I think that the pure joy of her performance and the way that she presents herself is really inspiring,” Kim said. “That’s somebody who has found who she is by rejecting what everyone else asked her to be when she was at 14 or 15 or 16 years old.”
Kim also relates to the messages of the film personally. As a first-generation Korean American, Kim spent a lot of his early years between two cultures. Outside of his home, he would sometimes be mistaken for someone else — “another Asian” or a “model minority,” he said, even though he considered himself a rebellious teen.
“Film and books really helped me understand my neighbors and my friends, and so I feel the responsibility for making films that have something to say,” said Kim, who grew up across the street from Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park Library. “I believe that almost everything you do as a filmmaker, and probably as an artist, is political in some way. You decide who your characters are. You decide what is important. Sometimes, when you make a really good film or tell a really good story … you decide what the moral code is. It doesn’t matter whether you’re making a romantic comedy or a Hallmark movie.”
Kim’s love of the arts started at Gunn High School in Palo Alto. There, he fell in with the theater crowd after finding himself benched with the highly competitive tennis team. He ended up playing the lead in the school play his senior year.
He went on to study literature and creative writing at University of California at Santa Cruz, where he helped found the Shakespeare Santa Cruz theater festival. He then studied film at University of Southern California and spent years as a journalist.
Filmmaking amid pandemic, wildfires
The casting process for “Reunion” was difficult because it began during the pandemic, meaning auditions, with the exception of one or two actors, took place online, Kim said. The film has an ensemble cast but is led by Jake Choi, who plays Guy, and is known for playing Miggy Park on the TV show “Single Parents” alongside Leighton Meester.
In January 2025, “Reunion” faced another challenge on the first day of filming in Los Angeles: the devastating Eaton and Pacific Palisades fires, which killed at least 28 people and destroyed over 16,000 buildings.
“Sometime after lunch, one of our producers came up and said, ‘I think we have a problem,’” Kim said. “He showed me this video, and it was the start of the Eaton fires in the mountains. And we went outside the building, and you could literally see the fires about 2 miles away.”
The fires displaced members of the production team, some of whom lost their homes. The filmmakers decided to press forward after a 10-day break, he said.
“We did our best to be respectful,” he said. “We knew the fires were going to be cataclysmic, and they were the largest natural disaster in Southern California history. But we also wanted to make something out of this environment. We believed in our film, and we wanted to put our resources towards the city itself.”
Kim said he would like to film his next movie, “The Request,” in the Bay Area if he secures the financing.
“An independent film is sort of like the traveling circus,” he said. “You have to find out where you’re going to put your tents and throw on this show. To me, that’s one of the energizing things about film.”
“Reunion” also stars Academy Award-nominated actress Candy Clark (“American Graffiti,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth”), Kelli Garner (“Lars and the Real Girl,” “Thumbsucker”), Madeline Zima (“Twin Peaks,” “Subservience”), Ludi Lin (“Mortal Kombat,” “Power Rangers”), Ryan Hansen (“Party Down,” “Veronica Mars”), Helena Mattsson (“Surrogates,” “666 Park Avenue”), Sarah Waisman (“The Goldbergs,” “Fallout”) and Crystal Rivers (“General Hospital,” “The Resident”).
“Reunion” premieres at the California Theatre, 345 S. First St., San Jose, on March 15 at 12:30 p.m. It will screen again on March 21 at 2:45 p.m. at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Mountain View, 2575 California St., Suite 99, in Mountain View. Single tickets are $14; festival pass options start at $50. Tickets are available at tinyurl.com/ReunionatCinequest.
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