SXSW 2020 - The Donut King
SXSWOne of the most beloved food items in America is the donut. Of the many stories that make up America, one of the most defining would be the story of immigrants coming and building a life for themselves and their families. It’s a story that has helped define the idea of what America can be. It’s also one that helped Cambodian immigrants to have a near monopoly on the donut market in Los Angelas, with the help of one man, Ted Ngoy, the subject of Alice Gu’s debut documentary, The Donut King.
Opening with interviews of owners of the many Cambodian-American donut shops still open in LA, we’re introduced to Ted, an ambitious immigrant who fled to America from the conflicts in Cambodia during the early seventies. Ted arrived in Camp Pendleton in California with his family and the thousands of others fleeing. After leaving the camp and finding someone to sponsor his citizenship, he began working small jobs to support his family before going to work for a regional donut company that taught him the trade. Not soon after, Ted would move on to open his own shops. As Ted was building his life in America, further political turmoil in Cambodia forces hundreds of thousands to flee the country, with many going to America. During this time, Ted sponsors over a hundred families to become citizens, many of whom would come to Ted to learn the donut trade and eventually open their own donut shops, partly owned by Ted. After growing his business into a multimillion dollar franchise — big enough to keep Dunkin’ Donuts out of California — Ted lost it all to gambling. He even traded some of the shops to the immigrants he hired for cash to fuel his addiction once he ran out of his own.
The film is told through a combination of interview, archival footage/photographs, and inventive animated sequences. The first two acts of the film mostly follow Ted’s rise from immigrant who couldn’t speak English to owning over ninety percent of all donut shops in southern California during the eighties. Snippets throughout this time show how he helped build a community for Cambodian immigrants through his donut shops. Following Ted’s downfall, the films perspective changes going into the third act, with majority of the time now spent with the families that Ted helped. We’re shown the children of these people, many of whom have gone on to work in the shops. Changing them from run of the mill shops top popular stores with lines out the door, Instagram accounts, and unique donuts that help them survive corporate takeover of areas by the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. It’s those stories that prevent this documentary from being yet another tired rise and fall story.
Alice Gu’s The Donut King is a quintessential American story of immigration, ambition, downfall, and donuts. While the film follows Ted Ngoy’s journey from having very little to king of the donut trade and back again is immensely entertaining, it’s the stories of the Cambodian immigrants he helped that make this a vital documentary that shouldn’t be missed.
