Julia Kwan is a Vancouver-based filmmaker whose cinematic works often delve into the Chinese-Canadian cultural experience. Raised in Vancouver by Chinese immigrant parents, Kwan studied film at Ryerson University in Toronto and was a director resident at the Canadian Film Centre when she made her award-winning short film Three Sisters on Moon Lake, about Chinese-Canadian sisters who discover the beauty and tragedy of the imagination.

In 2005, Kwan made her feature-film directorial debut with Eve and the Fire Horse. The coming-of-age story about a precocious nine-year-old premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and played at Sundance, where it won the coveted Special Jury Prize for World Cinema. In 2007, Kwan received the Claude Jutra Award for the best feature by a first-time director in Canada.

In 2014, Kwan directed Everything Will Be, an NFB feature-length doc that captures the subtle nuances of Vancouver’s Chinatown in the midst of transformation. The Zoo is her first animated film.