”Believe in your art in a time when people tell you that art is not important. When they tell you that art doesn’t matter, or that a fucking app can do art, that is always the prelude to fascism.” - Guillermo Del Toro

On the tail end of an international tour of his second feature OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO, it is fair to say that director Terry Chiu has earned the status of cult auteur. Refusing to slow down, Chiu and Team are now in development of his third feature film: A.A.A. LOVE WILL REIGN AGAIN.

THE PROJECT

Set in a satire of modern-day authoritarianism, a group of deadbeat artists try to save a threatened free world. They are hindered by interpersonal conflict and unresolved angst, but they successfully expose a diabolical plot on a metaphysical scale by our all-star league of dipshit autocrats, tech oligarchs, and disaffected hipsters. Amazingly, an indifferent public doesn’t care, and humanity is plunged into a deeper hellscape than ever—a metaphor to the ever-deepening stakes we witness today.

With society at the mercy of fascist overlords, only one class remains: a new gang of virtuous outcast artists. The power of their convictions manifests as mythical powers. Up against a system that demands we look away, these defiant reject artists will refuse, self-actualize, and come together as rebel fighters to beat up fascism, its enablers, and its supernatural gods.

The veil of rules collapses, and the world ruptures into a supernatural jianghu free-for-all.

TO BE HUMBLY FORTHCOMING…

Hey, it's Terry. An honest thanks for taking the time to read this.

I did not want to make a crowdfunding campaign for this. I’ve done them for past projects and while I never remotely met my goals then, raising what I could was validating.

Now it’s different. The economic disparity and oligarchic suffocation that’s worse than ever on normal people; the fact that everyone’s trying to pick everyone’s pockets and asking for funding; the combined conflict that this endeavor to raise money will by all disproportion reach normal people who aren’t rich.

I was hoping to straightforward-raise private funding from a Liberal Peter Thiel. But turns out finding someone who is at once antifascist, rich, and wants to fund extreme indie art is on par with locating a dodo bird. That’s my bad. I wanted rich leftist money on behalf of poor people, to make art for poor people. I didn’t wanna go straight to the people—instead believing in the radical cause of wealth redistribution, and uncreative privileged people doing their part for hopefully-creative unprivileged people.

If your net income wasn’t over 150K USD per year, I did not want your money. Not cause it wasn’t worth enough, but because I’d Feel Extremely Guilty. I do not have the moral vacuum of some rando who can entitle themself to your money for their DIY vanity project. But this isn’t that. This is supposed to matter to you. Matter to you as a call to hostilely-unabashed empathy. And I must respect the democratic will of the people and their agency to decide how to vote with their wallets. And so regardless if you’re loaded or limited—anyone’s choice to support this means the world.

If you already know me or my work, I hope you’ll recognize some honesty in this text. If you don’t really know me, I hope this project can somehow speak to you. I will not contribute to the narcissistic brainrot of "artists" who could not give less of a damn what happens to the world and humanity so long as they can get off on their narcissism. Even if this project crashes and burns, I will have no regrets. 80 years from now if people can still read, some kid will flip through the pages of a media history book and they will not find the names of those who worked on this project as being part of the fascist rightwing cabal that took over the film scene.

Despite this first-person diatribe, I must only be the allowed messenger. What matters is the message. And I would not reach out if I didn’t believe so vehemently in community art as a force of liberal sincerity against tyranny. We need sincerity. Like actual no-bullshit power metal-level progressiveness. I’m so fuckin done with this MAGA-fam-and-tech-feudalist-funded alt/far-right edgelord bile; equally the performative leftist bad-vibes collaboration/ascendance with fascism that gets a pass by waving diversity and virtue signalling. Too many damngod trolls up in this hizzy who take and feel zero responsibility for their roles and platform in this cracked culture. Also die AI.

You fund this project, you are mandating the response to all that.

I've taken it as creatively far as I can with my life-savings; and while this new creative battle would continue the ethos of community art, it asks the world to show up for us too. This production would require paying for the cast and crew, production design, special effects, stunts, insurance, accommodations, and so on. As wholly-independent artists working completely outside the industry, our mission is to pull off a most scrappily-sprawling saga that rivals the spirit of classic studio spectacles. But if we're telling a story that studios, grant bodies, and venture capitalists react to like vampires to garlic—our resources must come outside of them.

We will not make this without the necessary funding. As an act of trust—we will not extract any funds until we’ve reached our minimal starting amount of 100K of 300K. So you can trust we will not pull out at 99K and gamble it away on crypto. We do not take any of this for granted.

My wishful idealism for wealth redistribution is the same—of exclusively affluent patrons funding this. But I will get over my debilitating anxiety of poor people taking ownership of their own consumer fate. 20 bucks here might as well be 20 less to Fox News or Paramount+. You'd be showing up just as hardcore as anyone else.

That said, I know for a fact that this will not be in the hands of us proletariat. The scope and ask is too high. So unless I have Chris Stuckmann grift reach, something’s gotta give from people who have more.

So to you out there, Guilty Privileged Likely-White Person With Generational Wealth: we believe in the message we wanna give. The chance we’re taking is that you may believe in it as well.

This campaign could well end up a bust and confirm I should’ve retired to raise kittens. But someone(plural)’s gotta make broodingly-silly antifascist Hong Kong-style battle cinema.

If nothing else, I wanna know we tried.

I'm grateful to you.

- Terry Chiu Leung

CORE TEAM

Thomas Chan is a film worker in the City of Toronto who loves the cinema of Hong Kong.

"From getting to know him over the years since the release of ODC, I have come to learn that there is no other young Asian director who is moving like Terry Chiu. At this stage of his career, headed into this third feature, what I respect most about Terry is the absolute steadfastness he has to voicing his beliefs: this time, a satisfying repudiation of techno-fascism, driven by the unabashed empowerment of Asian Canadians.

There will be a real feeling of anger and indignation here that, when rendered through Chiu’s lens, will be nothing short of revolutionary. This is our promise to you with AAA."

Vic Gay lives in the forest and at the time of this writing is likely watching Argentina play for the World Cup.

"If I am caught engaging with the games, please note that I do so from an uncompromised leftist position while able to compartmentalize my dissent at the beyond-corrupt FIFA organization, its Euro-Bezos Baldy Boss, the Make-A-Wish peace prize he invented for his Orange Turd Crush, and President Douche-Beatle who chainsaws my home country of Argentina."

Cullen McFater is an award-winning Canadian director and founder of Postromo Pictures, with over twenty films to his credit. At 22, he wrote and directed his debut feature film Daylight Again, followed by the experimental feature Human Nature, shot across 18 countries from 2022 to 2024. A versatile filmmaker, McFater also works as a cinematographer, camera operator, and actor, with credits including Ethan Eng's Therapy Dogs (2022) and Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein (2025).

"I first got wind of the legend that is Terry Chiu in late 2022, when a friend invited me to a screening of his film Open Doom Crescendo under the guise that it was impossible to explain and so I should just go see it. Since being sucked into the Terry-verse, I’ve gotten to know him as an ultra-passionate die hard proponent of DIY cinema, whether that’s road-showing his own film or championing the works of like-minded artists. When Terry asked me to help out on this new project, I could only respond with a bit of shock that he’d trust me to execute his vision adequately - but with that, I’ve also been crazy excited to see what Terry and co. can do with a real budget."