SXSW 2020 review: THE DONUT KING spotlights the Cambodian refugee that launched the California donut craze

While SXSW was canceled this year due to the coronavirus outbreak, we are running reviews of a number of titles that were scheduled to screen at the festival (with permission from the filmmakers and distributors). 

If you’ve ever picked up a dozen donuts in one of those unmistakable pink boxes or browsed through the astonishing variety of donuts on display at shops like DK’s, then you have Ted Ngoy to thank. The Cambodian refugee known as The Donut King is the subject of a new documentary of the same name by first-time director Alice Gu, which just won the Special Jury Recognition for Achievement in Documentary Storytelling at this year’s SXSW.

The 77-year-old Ted Ngoy escaped the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia during the 70s and eventually made his way to California, where he began working at the long-running donut shop Winchell’s. Quickly learning the ropes, Ngoy eventually opened his own shop, Christy’s Donuts, named after his wife. The shop was a major success, and Ngoy quickly began opening up additional outlets in Southern California, which he would lease to other Cambodian refugees.

While continuing to build up the family business, Ngoy was also sponsoring additional Cambodian families, eventually sponsoring over 100 individuals. With many of those coming to open up their own shops through his support, Ngoy quickly established a Cambodian donut empire and was taking in more money than he knew what to do with. The family bought a lavish mansion (complete with an elevator) and were seemingly living The American Dream. But Ngoy began to get restless, spending more and more time in Las Vegas, where he gambled millions of dollars over the years, leading to a divorce from his wife and an eventual return to Cambodia.

In his absence, Ngoy became a bit of a mythical figure in the Cambodian donut community, which was thriving as new generations began taking over the donut shops from their parents and creating new and exciting versions of the familiar fried treats, embracing social media and spurring massive demand.

The Donut King initially feels like an inspirational tale of an immigrant’s hard work paying off, but Ngoy’s story eventually becomes a bit more complicated as unbridled greed begins to take over his life. Nevertheless, The Donut King is more about an entire community bonding together in a new country and pushing towards success than it is about one particular man’s story. Director Alice Gu shifts between eras and countries, juxtaposing the terror of the Khmer Rouge with the sunny locales of Southern California to show just how far the Cambodian community in Southern California has come and the unimaginable horrors many of them escaped from.

Gu keeps The Donut King looking lively, with a number of pastel-colored animated sequences, Instagram-worthy shots of countless creatively-designed donuts and news footage of the Cambodian war, all of which combine to present a deeply layered look at how a group of immigrants was able to thrive in the U.S. by taking an American food staple and making it their own. Even as Dunkin Donuts begins to aggressively encroach on their territory, throngs of customers still show up to loyally support their favourite local donut shops, which speaks not only to their superior donuts but to the sense of community the shopowners and staff instill throughout Southern California.

The Donut King is an inspiring story of the integral role immigrants play in our society, a notion that sadly couldn’t be any timelier given the anti-immigration rhetoric being spouted in the U.S. these days. With estimates that there are now over 1,500 Cambodian-run donut shops in California alone, it’s clear that Ted Ngoy’s influence is strong as ever. The Donut King is a fitting tribute to that legacy and the legions of creative donut-slingers that continue to pursue their sticky-sweet craft on their own terms.