Deann Borshay Liem

Deann Borshay Liem is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian known for films that explore war, memory, family and identity including her landmark adoption films First Person Plural, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee and Geographies of Kinship. Her work on the Korean War including Memory of Forgotten War, Crossings and the oral history project, Legacies of the Korean War, explores divided families and women’s role in peacemaking. She has served as Executive Producer, Producer, Executive in Charge and consultant on numerous films including The Apology, Mimi & Dona, Seeing Allred, Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk of Lightning, Ishi’s Return, The Eddy Zheng Story, Kelly Loves Tony, AKA Don Bonus and many others. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, California Humanities, Sundance Institute, Rockefeller Foundation and San Francisco Film Society. She is currently serving as Producer for the ITVS-supported film, Vivien's Wild Ride, and is directing Relative Strangers, a new project that follows a group of mixed race adopted Koreans on their journey of loss, discovery and renewal.

About Mu Films

Mu Films is a non-profit documentary production studio based in Berkeley, California.  The mission of Mu Films is to produce and distribute documentaries and educational media about social, historical, and cultural issues with a focus on untold stories from under-represented communities.  Our goal is to use media to bring about social justice, promote cultural understanding and encourage positive social change.

Mu Films’ inaugural production, First Person Plural, tells the story of filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem and her adoption from South Korea by an American family. The recipient of numerous awards including an Emmy Award nomination, First Person Plural premiered at Sundance (2000) and aired nationally as part of the acclaimed PBS documentary series Point of View (POV). First Person Plural is now considered a classic in the field of Adoption Studies and continues to be taught in classrooms across the country.

Since its founding, Mu Films has created a unique portfolio of documentaries that explores adoption, race, identity and family. In addition to First Person Plural, these  include In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee which examines the ethics of international adoption; Geographies of Kinship, a historical exploration of adoptions from South Korea; and Vivien's Wild Ride (in production), a personal essay about adoption, sight loss and creativity from the point of view of groundbreaking film editor and birth mother Vivien Hillgrove.

Mu Films has also developed a portfolio of films and projects about war and its legacies including Memory of Forgotten War, the Legacies of the Korean War oral history project, and Crossings which follows thirty women peacemakers advocating for peace on the Korean peninsula.

And as part of our program to support independent filmmakers with compelling stories to tell about urgent contemporary and historical issues, Mu Films supports projects through producing and executive producing. These films include Tiffany Hsiung’s The Apology, Ben Wang’s Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story and Alka Raghuram’s Burqa Boxers.