This filmmaker screened her documentary in a Borneo living room to the community that inspired it

Ashley Duong is a young Canadian filmmaker from Calgary who now lives and works in Montreal. A few months ago, she completed her first documentary feature A Time to Swim, which follows an Indigenous activist from Malaysia as he returns home for the first time since he was exiled in the 1990s for his activism against deforestation.

For Duong, who has been working on this doc for five years, it was so important to screen the film for the community that inspired it that she even missed her own Calgary premiere because she was organizing DIY community screenings in living rooms and small spaces on the island of Borneo (in Malaysia, the film had a chance of being banned, so Duong had to make the screenings private).

The more I got to know the community, the more I started to care about the issue.- Ashley Duong, filmmaker

In the video, you'll get to understand why Duong made the decision to miss her big premiere for this meaningful trip — and you'll see how her film is inspiring young people from the Sarawak community.

A Time to Swim was recently awarded Special Jury Prize for Feature Documentary at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Follow the film here.

Watch Exhibitionists on Friday nights at 12:30 a.m. (1 NT) and Sundays at 3:30 p.m. (4NT) on CBC Television.