Patrick Epino is a writer, director, and producer based in Los Angeles. His work explores the lives of outsiders pushed to the margins of society, drawing on his personal experiences as a Filipino American latchkey kid born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His feature project VETERANO, a bank heist thriller, is a part of the 2025 Producers Guild of America Create Lab. The script advanced to the second round of the 2024 Sundance Development Lab and was a finalist for the 2025 Gotham Week Project Market. A proof-of-concept short film was completed this past summer. His pilot SOUTH CITY, an original coming-of-age comedy series, was a finalist for the Film Independent Episodic Lab.
Patrick is the co-director, director of photography, and editor of IN PROXIMITY, a weekly podcast produced by Proximity Media. His debut feature, MR. SADMAN, a satirical dark comedy starring Scoot McNairy, was selected for the IFP/Gotham Narrative Labs. He co-created, co-directed, and produced AWESOME ASIAN BAD GUYS, an action comedy starring Randall Park and Tamlyn Tomita, which evolved from a popular video on Patrick’s National Film Society YouTube channel and was the first episodic project chosen for IFP/Gotham’s Emerging Narrative Forum.
National Film Society was a founding member of PBS Digital Studios, and through its creative studio, Patrick has collaborated with Amazon, Filmmaker Magazine, Starz, and IMDb. He also directed and produced LONG DISTANCE, a narrative podcast and short documentary series about stories in the Filipino diaspora, selected for the inaugural Google Podcasts Creator Program.
VETERANO
Feature Film • Crime Thriller
Writer/Director/Producer
In 1981 San Francisco, a desperate Filipino World War II veteran launches a frantic bank robbery spree to save his dying best friend, putting him on a collision course with a young, ambitious detective eager to make his mark.
* Official Selection of the 2025 Producers Guild of America Create Lab.
* Proof-of-concept short film coming soon.
AWESOME ASIAN BAD GUYS
Feature Film • Action-Comedy
Creator/Director/Producer
An irreverent homage to the unsung villains of ’80s & ’90s action flicks, this nonstop action-comedy plunges a motley crew of washed up Asian bad guy actors into a deadly mission to take down Los Angeles’ most nefarious mob boss.
Starring Randall Park (Ant-Man and the Wasp, Fresh Off the Boat), Tamlyn Tomita (The Karate Kid Part II, The Good Doctor), Al Leong (Die Hard, Lethal Weapon), Dante Basco (Hook), Yuji Okumoto (The Karate Kid Part II), Aaron Takahashi (The Wedding Ringer), and George Cheung (Rambo: First Blood Part II).
* Official Selection of the IFP/Gotham Emerging Storytellers’ Project Forum.
* Distributed by Gunpowder & Sky (formerly FilmBuff) and available on digital platforms, including iTunes, Amazon and Google Play.
MR. SADMAN
Feature Film • Dark Comedy
Writer/Director
A satirical fish out of water story about a 1990 Saddam Hussein double who loses his job and moves to Los Angeles in search of a new life.
Starring Al No’mani (Three Kings, Arrested Development), Scoot McNairy (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Narcos: Mexico), Amanda Fuller (Last Man Standing, Orange Is the New Black), Tim Kang (Magnum P.I., The Mentalist), and Rudy Ramos (Yellowstone, The High Chaparral).
* Official Selection of the IFP/Gotham Narrative Labs and IFP/Gotham Week.
VOID
Short Film • Comedy
Writer/Director
In a culture of quick fixes, a sad guy is trying to get happy—and so is everyone else.
* Distributed by Cinequest International.
SPUNK
Short Film • Comedy
Writer/Director
A man must come to terms with who and what he really is.
* Distributed by Microcinema’s Blackchair Collection.
