LOGLINE
Chris 'CHiRPiE' Mercado, a first-generation American & Disney choreographer, burdened by a life of high expectations and personal loss, embarks on a transformative journey back to the Philippines, seeking to heal and reconnect with the cultural roots that have long felt like a distant echo in his fast-paced American life.
"I am an American, that much of me is certain. But the rest is a fusion, a cultural song that has its rhythm in America but its melody in the East."
— Ha Jin,
Author and Poet
MEeT
CHRIs "CHiRPiE" MERCADO
Chris "CHiRPiE" Mercado has spent his career making other people feel something. As a Filipino-American choreographer and the creative force behind some of Disney's most memorable performance work, he's been the person in the room who makes it all click. But for a long time, something didn't click for him. Caught between an American life built on ambition and a Filipino heritage that always felt just out of reach, Chris has been living in the space between two worlds. Reconnected is his journey to close that gap — and figure out who he is when the music stops.
Summary
Somewhere between the life you were raised to live and the culture you were raised to forget, there's a question most first-generation Americans never get to answer. Who am I, really? For Chris "CHiRPiE" Mercado, that question came to a head after the loss of someone close. It sent him back to the Philippines — back to the landscapes, the communities, and the family stories that had always existed just beyond his grasp. What he found there wasn't a simple answer. It was something harder and more honest — a self that had been waiting. Reconnected is Chris's story. But it belongs to anyone who has ever felt the pull of a home they've never actually been to.
The Space Between
Two Worlds
Most first-generation kids grow up with two versions of home. The one they live in. And the one they hear about. The food, the language, the stories passed down at the dinner table — vivid enough to feel real, distant enough to feel like myth. You belong completely to neither place and carry both of them everywhere. It's a specific kind of longing. And it's anything but rare. Reconnected is built for everyone who knows exactly what that feels like.
Lead/Co-Director
Osobarra Films
chris mercado
Consulting Prod.
Osobarra Films
vik chopra
co-director
Osobarra Films
jr mitchell
Producer/writer
Osobarra Films
beckett hobbs
FILMMAKERS
