Wouldn't life be easier if I were white?': inside a provocative race-swap body horror

"It was the first time I felt genuinely unsafe here, she says. Alongside a growing fear, childhood memories resurfaced—the internal and external racism and the exhaustion of never quite fitting in. I moved to Australia when I was seven and didn't speak English—it was a tough time for me, she admits. And then there was one particular recurring thought. There were many times when I'd wake up as a teenager and think to myself: Wouldn't life be easier if I were white?"

"An insecure Asian American high schooler undergoes a procedure at a mysterious cosmetics clinic called Ethnos (tagline: if you can't beat them—be them) that renders people of colour visibly white, permanently. It's taking 'I don't see colour' to the ultra-extreme: equality achieved only when we all look the same, and that means whiteness."

"Winner of the 2025 narrative feature grand jury prize at SXSW, Slanted blends dark satire, body horror and coming-of-age drama. Its unsubtlety is a feature, creating space to contemplate societal power dynamics, the immigrant experience, race and body image without ever feeling like a lecture."

Following the 2021 Atlanta mass shooting targeting Asian women, filmmaker Amy Wang created Slanted, her feature directorial debut exploring themes of racial identity and belonging. The film centers on Joan, an insecure Asian American high schooler who undergoes a procedure at a cosmetics clinic that permanently renders people of color white. This premise serves as extreme satire on colorblindness and assimilation pressures. Wang drew from her own experiences as an Asian Australian immigrant to America, including childhood racism and teenage desires to be white. The film blends dark satire, body horror, and coming-of-age drama to examine societal power dynamics without feeling preachy. It won the 2025 narrative feature grand jury prize at SXSW.

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