Liquor Store Cactus

Kohl Perry is a slacker skateboarder, with misfit friends, who spends his days skipping class, smoking weed and antagonizing the local corner-store owner.  Feeling alienated and lost, he finds inspiration in the form of the school’s straight-A student, Sarah Kim.  While Kohl’s life seems headed nowhere, Sarah is charting what many typical Asian-American parents dream of for their kids, a good college education and a bright future.  They soon begin a tentative romance and fall in love for the first time.

Their tender relationship is troubled from the start: Kohl’s friends can’t understand why he’d go for the prudish good girl, while Sarah’s parents will only be happy to see her with a nice, Korean boy.  Despite these complications, Kohl's life seems like it might be headed down a better path, until a fork in the road leads Kohl towards an unfortunate and resentful fate.  Dealt with the common choice of having to choose between your friends or your love, Kohl will ultimately have to decide whether his first love is worth risking it all for.

An offbeat drama that takes a look at the bitter realities of life, Director Eugene Kim’s thesis film from San Jose State University is a tale of growing from your mistakes and lessons learned from your loved ones, and a beautiful portrayal of innocent love.  US Premiere.