Spirited
Under a backdrop of colliding belief systems, a skeptical Hmong-American filmmaker is told she has been chosen to become a shaman, setting her on a decade-long journey to understand her community’s ancestral spiritual traditions. Spirited is a poignant and introspective documentary following Joua over a decade of her life as she struggles to reconnect with her people’s belief system and grapples with the decision to accept or reject this calling. Her intercultural and interfaith family must sort through their differences as the symptoms of Joua’s “shaman sickness” worsen, signaling that it is time to make a choice. Joua connects with other rising shamans and befriends young Master Shaman Billy whose reputation in the community is rapidly growing. Billy must balance this newfound popularity with the deeply private struggles he faces as a healer. Together, Joua and Billy face hard truths about trauma, healing, generational clashes, intercultural tensions, gender-based abuse, and how this ancient practice is changing here in America.
The Hmong are an ethnic minority group scattered across parts of Asia. Their animist belief system is rooted in ancestral veneration and can be traced back several millennia. Shamans play an important role providing spiritual healing which many in the community prefer over modern medicine. The practice has survived war, assimilation, attempted erasure and forced migration across several country lines. In the early 1960s, the CIA recruited the Hmong living on rural Lao hillsides to join them in a covert Secret War next door to the Vietnam War. The Hmong became allies disrupting communist supply routes and rescuing downed American pilots until the U.S. withdrew in 1975. The Hmong were forced to seek safety across the globe. 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Southeast Asians migrating as refugees to the United States. Today, over 360,000 Hmong call America home.
Many Hmong Americans are asking how their ancient traditions can survive in a western, capitalist society with a culture so different from what their ancestors knew. Is it possible to honor both identities and cultures? How will this new generation of shamans reshape the community’s healing practices for the next century? After more than a decade on this journey, what will Joua finally decide?
