About the Film

After a family reunion, Japanese-Canadian filmmaker Jeff Chiba Stearns embarks on a journey of self-discovery to find out why everyone in his Japanese-Canadian family married interracially after his grandparents’ generation.

Using a mix of live action and animation, “One Big Hapa Family” explores why 95 percent of Japanese-Canadians--more than any other ethnic group--marry interracially and how their mixed children perceive their unique multiracial identities.

The stories of our generations of a Japanese-Canadian family to come to life through animation by some of Canada’s brightest independent animators, including Louise Johnson, Ben Meinhardt, Todd Ramsay, Kunal Sen, Jonathan Ng, and the filmmaker himself.

“One Big Hapa Family” makes us question: Is interracial mixing the end of multiculturalism as we know it?

About the Filmmaker

Jeff Chiba Stearns is an award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker. Born in Kelowna, British Columbia, of Japanese and European heritage, he graduated from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design with a degree in Film Animation in 2001. Soon after, he founded Meditating Bunny Studio Inc., which specializes in creating animated, documentary, and experimental films geared at both children and adults.

Chiba Stearns's films include the animated shorts “Kip and Kyle” (2000), “The horror of Kindergarten” (2001), “What Are You Anyways?” (2005), “Yellow Sticky Notes (2007),” and “Ode to a Post-it Note” (2010). “One Big Hapa Family" (2010), which uses a mix of live action and animation, is his first feature film.