Sex, Lies and Videotape was a milestone in the history of American independent movies: in 1989, it won the top award at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to become a box-office success. It made indie movies an attractive proposition for both studios and stars, because these movies could sometimes bring prestige and respect as “art-house” works with critical acclaim, and—very important—could be made for small amounts of money.

The growth of indies has also meant that it’s possible to make movies that are personal and small-scale, focusing on cultural milieus that large Hollywood films either tend to ignore outright or treat in broad stereotypes. Red Doors, a semi-autobiographical story about a Chinese-American family in suburban New York, is a good example of this kind of intimate indie film.

The Wongs, the family in the film, have three daughters: the oldest is a successful businesswoman who is making wedding plans when she encounters an old flame, throwing her future into uncertainty. The middle daughter is a medical student who falls for a lesbian TV star who is researching a role at the hospital; the youngest is a high school senior with a rebellious streak. (When we meet her, she is wearing a T-shirt that says “God Is Dead—Nietzsche” on the front and “Nietzsche Is Dead—God” on the back.) The father, who has just retired, is going through a silent existential crisis.

Except the mother, who is garrulous and overbearing—and blithely unaware of it—the rest of the family is not given to extravagant outbursts of emotion. They live their lives in a quiet emotional solitude, while trying to figure out how to navigate their relationships and feelings and perhaps get a bit closer to each other. This is a hushed movie, but its deadpan humor keeps it from ever getting somber.

Georgia Lee, who wrote and directed Red Doors, was an assistant to Martin Scorsese and based this debut film on her own life. Her background is interesting: at her parents request she attended Harvard Business School, then landed a lucrative job before mustering the courage to quit and pursue her real love, filmmaking. In the movie, the father obsessively watches home video footage of his daughters, trying to nostalgically recapture the past. It’s poignant to find out that this footage is from the director’s own home movies from her childhood.

One strength of Red Doors is that it’s both culturally specific in its roots in the Chinese-American experience and also universal—we all know that families are alike no matter where you go. The title of the movie refers to a Chinese belief that painting a door red invites good luck and harmony into the home. Fortune and felicity are not easily found in this film, which makes us appreciate them all the more when they appear, towards the end, as a faint and tentatively optimistic glimmer on the family’s doorstep.