Austin Asian American Film Festival 2026

Every festival has a film that quietly becomes its heart. At AAAFF 2026, it is The Gas Station Attendant — journalist and filmmaker Karla Murthy’s first feature, and a portrait of the most important man in her life: her father.

He grew up poor in India and clawed his way into an education and a career, the kind of upward arc immigrant families pin their whole hope on. And yet, decades later and half a world away, Murthy finds him working the overnight shift behind the counter of a Texas gas station. How a man of such promise ends up there — through loss, through a collapsing industry, through ventures that didn’t pan out — is the mystery the film gently pulls apart.

“Devastating and Beautiful… Endlessly Surprising… an absolute must-see.”

Murthy builds the film from the most intimate materials imaginable: decades of family home movies, and the long, looping phone calls she recorded with her father during those quiet graveyard shifts. The result is less an exposé than a conversation — a daughter trying to understand the man before it’s too late, while reckoning with her own crooked path toward motherhood in New York. It is about immigration and downward mobility, yes, but more than that it is about the distance between parents and children, and the grace it takes to finally close it.

The film world premiered at Sheffield DocFest, swept Best Documentary Feature honors on the festival circuit, and was named a Centerpiece Documentary at CAAMFest 2026. AAAFF’s screening includes a Q&A — a rare chance to hear how a film this personal gets made.