Joon Cho

2026 Diverso Fellow
University of Southern California

sometimes I wish I was a fish
Logline: In the not-so-distant future, a depressed male sex worker is paid to love a client for a night.

Joon Cho is a writer-director born in Seoul and raised between Illinois, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Idaho. His directorial work has screened at the Cinequest Film Festival, Calgary International Film Festival, Dances with Films and beyond, while his written work has earned distinctions from the Academy Nicholl, the Black List, the Sundance Cultural Impact Residency and won the 2025 Humanitas Carol Mendelsohn Drama Award. He was among four directors selected for ColorCreative's inaugural FindYourPeople Fellowship, where his film was executive produced by Emmy-nominee Issa Rae and premiered at the 2025 Pan African Film Festival. 

An alumnus of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts Graduate Film & Television Production Program, Joon received the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award and the Bridges & Larson Directing Award and is a current Michener Fellow. He is based between Austin and Los Angeles, where he is in post-production for his feature documentary CARBONDALE, 1999 and in development for his feature narrative debut, MONSTERS. His writing and filmmaking hybridizes genres while centering diaspora and dramatic coming of age to illustrate possibilities of contemporary healing through tenderness and empathy.